Games Meant to Boost Efficiency of Workers
If work could be more like a game, would it increase workers’ productivity?
BetterWorks, of Palo Alto, California, makes office software that blends aspects of social media, fitness tracking and video games into a system meant to keep employees more engaged with their work and one another. With the software, employees and their bosses set goals and log their progress on a digital dashboard that everyone in their company can see and comment on.
假如工作更像遊戲，員工的生產力能否提高？
加州帕羅奧圖BetterWorks公司生產的軟體將社群媒體、體能追蹤和電玩遊戲等面向混合成一個系統，要讓員工更投入工作和彼此互動。有了它，員工和老闆設定目標並將進度記錄在數位儀表板上，公司人人都能看見並發表評論。
The firm has raised about $15.5 million from investors, including John Doerr, the wellknown venture capitalist.
A critic might describe it as a white-collar spin on an old idea — workplace efficiency — that used to be performed by punch clocks and assembly lines. But Mr. Doerr, who has instilled similar concepts in many of the tech companies he has invested in, is betting that the same ideas will be adopted far beyond Silicon Valley.
該公司已從投資人籌得1,550萬美元，包括知名創投家約翰杜爾。
批評者也許認為，這是白領階級對職場效率表現在打卡鐘和生產線此一觀念的新瓶裝舊酒。但是杜爾已灌輸類似觀念到自己投資的多家科技公司，他認為同樣的觀念能遠播矽谷之外。
“I think we’re going to see more and more systems in this field of quantified work, or people science, that are going to make the most valuable resource that we have — which is our team — more effective,” he said .
Silicon Valley companies are known for casual work clothes and generous employee perks like free lunches , but they share corporate America’s affinity for dogmatic processes and mind-numbing acronyms. The Valley’s tech companies excel at turning those dreary processes into something useful.
杜爾說：「我認為我們將在量化工作或人類科學的領域，看見愈來愈多的系統，將讓我們擁有的最寶貴資源，就是我們的團隊，更有效率。」
矽谷企業以輕便的上班穿著和免費午餐等大方的員工好康著稱，但也沿襲美國企業喜好武斷的程序及超無聊縮寫字的傾向。矽谷的科技公司擅長將這些枯燥的過程變成有用的東西。
“The big picture is how to make all this stuff more data- driven,” said Kris Duggan, the chief executive of Better- Works. Mr. Duggan who founded Badgeville, whose software turns work tasks into badges and a leader board in an effort to add elements of games to work. His new company blends that game-playing sensibility with hard-core metrics.
Using BetterWorks software, workers set goals, like “Sign 10 new customers by May,” and enter them into an internal system that can be viewed by other employees . Co-workers can give each other encouragement (“cheers”) or shaming (“nudges”). A worker’s profile shows a digital tree that grows with accomplishments and shrivels with poor productivity.
「重點是如何讓一切更由數據驅動，」BetterWorks執行長克里斯．竇根表示。竇根是「獎章村」公司創辦人，該公司生產的軟體將工作任務變成獎章和積分板，試圖將遊戲成分加入。竇根的新公司融合了玩遊戲的感覺與嚴格的評量標準。
使用BetterWorks的軟體，員工設定目標，像是「5月前簽下10名客戶」，並鍵入內部系統，其他員工也看得到。同事可彼此鼓勵（歡呼）或漏氣（刺激）。員工基本資料展示一棵數位樹，隨工作績效高低而成長或枯萎。
The impulse to find ways to make people work harder is hardly new. Factories have long cajoled their people to compete with one another so that, through a combination of peer pressure and ambition, they do more work.
Karen Levy, a fellow at the Data and Society Research Institute in New York, did a three-year study on performance tracking in a decidedly old-line business: trucking. Over the last two decades, the industry has used GPS and other technologies to measure how fast drivers are going and how suddenly they brake, with the goal of getting goods delivered quickly but not so quickly that drivers waste gas.
設法刺激人們更賣力工作，算不上新鮮事。工廠早就透過同儕壓力和企圖心雙管齊下的方式，誘使員工彼此競爭，提高生產力。
紐約數據與社會研究院的研究員凱倫．李維，對無疑屬老牌行業的卡車貨運業做過三年的工作表現追蹤研究。過去20年間，業界使用衛星定位裝置等科技評量司機的車速和煞車有多突然，目標是貨物快速送達卻不浪費汽油。
To make drivers more efficient, companies post scoreboards in the break rooms or mail bonus checks to spouses so that they get competitive pressure from home as well as work.
One of the main ways people become more productive is by using their supposed downtime to do even more work. Many drivers did things like loading, unloading and inspecting their trucks during federally required breaks .“If you distract workers with the idea that they are playing the game, they don’t challenge the rules of the game,” she said.
為了讓司機更有效率，公司在休息室張掛積分榜或寄額外津貼的支票給司機的配偶，讓司機從家裡和職場都感受競爭壓力。
提高人們生產力一個重要方式是運用閒暇時間去做更多工作。許多司機在聯邦法令規定的休息時段裝卸貨、檢查車輛。「如果你讓員工覺得是在玩遊戲，他們就不會挑戰工作規範。」李維說。
Companies like BetterWorks are importing similar concepts to office jobs where performance is more subjective.
BetterWorks charges a monthly $15 fee for each user and has “seven figures” in revenue, according to Mr. Duggan. The software is cloud-based, allowing employees to use it across various devices.
BetterWorks這樣的公司正將類似觀念引進表現好壞評斷更為主觀的內勤工作。
據竇根表示，BetterWorks向每個用戶收取15美元的月費，營收達「七位數」。由於是雲端應用軟體，員工可以透過不同裝置使用。
But what if too much measurement makes people angry? That question is at the heart of another start-up, Culture Amp, an Australian company that makes a sort of worker- polling system , essentially a set of continuous, anonymous surveys that lets companies know how their workers are feeling and rates them against other companies in the same industry.
That way theywill know when everyone is about to quit.
但是萬一評量太多，把人給惹毛了該怎麼辦？這個問題是另一家新創公司成立的宗旨。澳洲Culture Amp公司製造一種員工意見調查系統，主要是一套連續、不記名的調查，讓公司知道員工感受如何以及員工對自家公司和業界其他公司的評比。
透過這種方式，公司可以知道何時應該罷手。
（張佑生譯）
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