Why working from home is good for business

Matt MullenwegThe basic problem with working in an office is you're just not in control of your work environment.

在辦公室工作最基本的問題是，你根本無法控制你的工作環(huán)境。

[The Way We Work]

Howdy, my name is Matt, and I'm the CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com,Jetpack and WooCommerce.

【我們的工作方式】

大家好，我是馬特，是 Automattic的首席執(zhí)行官，WordPress.com、Jetpack 和WooCommerce的母公司。

We're coming up on over 800 employees, and they live everywhere, from California to Alabama, Mississippi, to where I live in Texas. They're also in 67 countries. Canada, Mexico, India, New Zealand. Some of them choose not even to have a home base, they're nomads.

我們在全球各地有超過800位雇員，從加利福尼亞到亞拉巴馬，密西西比，到我所在的德克薩斯州。他們也分布在67個國家。加拿大，墨西哥，印度，新西蘭。他們中的一些人甚至沒有自己的固定居所，他們是游牧民族。

Whether they are in RVs or traveling through Airbnbs, they are in new places every day, week or month. As long as they can find good Wi-Fi, we don't care where they are.

不管他們住在房車中，還是在旅途中住Airbnbs，他們每天、每周或每月都在新的地方。只要能找到網(wǎng)速好的Wi-Fi，我們不關(guān)心他們在哪。

Our focus on distributed work didn't happen accidentally. It was a conscious choice from the very beginning. Notice I don't use the word "remote," because it sets up the expectation, that some people are essential and some aren't. I use the word "distributed" to describe what we do, where everyone is on an equal playing field.

我們以分布式工作為主可不是什么拍腦門的決定。我們一開始就是這么計劃的。注意我們沒有使用“遠(yuǎn)程”這個詞，因為這建立了預(yù)期，對有些人來說是必要的，有些人則不。我使用“分布式”來描述我們的工作方式，這里每個人都在平等的工作環(huán)境中。

I think a distributed workforce is the most effective way to build a company. The key is you have to approach it consciously. When we started WordPress, many of the first 20 hires were people I'd never met in person.

我認(rèn)為一個分布式的辦公場地是構(gòu)建公司最高效的方式。關(guān)鍵是你必須有意識地追尋它。當(dāng)我們創(chuàng)立WordPress時，我們雇傭的前20個員工中，大多數(shù)我都沒見過。

But we'd collaborated online, sometimes for years. I wanted to continue that for one simple reason. I believe that talent and intelligence are equally distributed throughout the world. But opportunity is not.

但我們在網(wǎng)上合作過，有些合作過好多年。我想保持這樣的合作是出于一個簡單的原因，我相信才能和智慧平均地分布在全世界各地。但機會并不是。

In Silicon Valley, the big tech companies fish from essentially the same small pond or bay. I make it a distributed company can fish from the entire ocean.

在硅谷，大型科技公司基本上從同一個小池塘或海灣捕魚。我使它成為可以從整個海洋捕魚的分布式公司。

Instead of hiring someone who grew up in Japan but lives in California, you can gain someone who lives, works, wakes up in the morning and goes to sleep every night wherever they are in the world.

與其雇傭一個成長在日本工作在加州的人，你可以得到一個在世界上任何地方都能生活、工作的員工，他們在早晨都會醒來，每天晚上都入睡。

They bring a different understanding of that culture and a different lived experience stay today. At the base of the decision to go distributed, there's a desire to give people autonomy over how they do their work.

他們帶來對本國文化的不同理解和一種與眾不同的生活體驗。分布式辦公的決策基礎(chǔ)在于，給予人們工作自主權(quán)的欲望。

Unless you're in a role where specific hours are important, you can make your own schedule. Everyone can have a corner office. They can have their windows, they can have the food they want to eat.

除非你特定的某個工作時間很重要，你可以定自己的時間表。每個人都可以有一個角落用來辦公。坐在自己喜歡的窗邊，吃想吃的食物，

You can choose when there's music and when there's silence. You can choose what temperature the room should be. You can save the time you'd spend commuting every day and put it into things that are important to you.

你可以選擇啥時候放音樂，啥時候安靜。你可以設(shè)定房間的溫度。你還可以節(jié)省通勤的時間，把它用在對你重要的事情上。

A distributed workforce is ideal for a technology company. But people often get the question, "This works great for y'all, but what about everyone else?"

分布式辦公對于科技公司很理想。但人們常常問我， “這對你們很適用，但對其他公司合適嗎？”

If you have an office, there are a few things you can do to build distributed capability.

如果你有辦公室的話，你可以做一些事情去建造分布式能力。

First: document everything. In an office, it's easy to make decisions in the moment, in the kitchen, in the hall.

首先：記錄一切東西。在辦公室中，很容易當(dāng)下就做決定，在廚房中，在大廳中。

But if people work remotely and some members of the team are having those conversations they don't have access to, they'll see these decisions being made without understanding the why.

但如果有人遠(yuǎn)程工作，無法參與一些團隊成員所進行的對話，他們就會在不了解原因的情況下看到這些決定。

Always leave a trail of where you were and what you were thinking about. This allows others to pick up where you left off.

總是留下你在哪里和你在想什么的痕跡。當(dāng)你走開時，其他人也能跟上。

It allows people in different time zones to interact, it's also great to think about as an organization evolves, people leaving and people joining, a lot of those same lines.

它讓在不同時區(qū)的人也能互動，隨著組織的發(fā)展，這也是一個很好的想法，鐵打的軍營流水的兵，一直都是如此。

Try to have as much communication as possible online. When everything's shared and public, it allows new people to catch up quickly.

要在網(wǎng)上留下盡可能多的信息。當(dāng)一切信息都被分享和公開時，可以讓新人很快追上。

You also need to find the right tools. There are so many apps and services that help with day-to-day communication, video conferencing, project management.

你也需要找到合適的工具。有很多的應(yīng)用和服務(wù)可以輔助日常溝通，視頻會議和項目管理。

You name it, you look around the office. The things that changed how you work probably aren't objects anymore.

看看你的辦公室，你應(yīng)該都知道它們。改變你工作方式的可能不是實物了。

They're things you access through your computer. So experiment with different tools that enable collaboration, see what works. Create productive, face-to-face time.

他們是你可以通過電腦獲得的東西。所以要去嘗試用來增強協(xié)作的不同工具，看看什么有效。創(chuàng)造富有成效的面對面的時間。

In a traditional office, you're in the same place 48 weeks out of the year and you might have three or four weeks apart.

在傳統(tǒng)辦公場所，一年中有48周你都在同一個地方，可能3或4周的時間在外面。

We try to flip that: we come together for short, intense bursts. Once a year we do a grand meet-up where the entire company comes together for a week.

我們試圖扭轉(zhuǎn)這一切：我們會舉行短期的聚會。每年我們開一次盛大的聚會，整個公司的人用一周的時間歡聚一堂。

It's half-work, half-play. The primary goal is connecting people.When we leave. we want to make sure everyone's aligned and on the same page, and they have a deeper connection with their colleagues.

這一半是工作，一半是社交。主要的目的是讓人們彼此熟絡(luò)。當(dāng)聚會結(jié)束時，我們要確保每個人的信息都是對等的，并且與同事有更密切的聯(lián)系。

When they work together the rest of the year, they can bring together that understanding and empathy.

當(dāng)他們在一年中的其他時間一起工作時，依然可以懷揣著理解和同理心。

And the final practice: give people the flexibility to make their own work environment.

還有最后一個實踐：幫助人們靈活地打造自己的工作環(huán)境。

Every person at Automattic has a co-working stipend that they can put towards a co-working space or just to buy coffee, so they don't get kicked out of the coffee shop.

Automattic的每個人都有共享辦公的津貼，他們可以把它用到共享辦公場地，或者去買個咖啡，這樣就不會被咖啡店趕出來。

One group in Seattle decided to pool their stipends together and rented a workspace on a fishing pier.

西雅圖的一群人決定把他們的津貼湊在一起，在一個碼頭上租了一個工作空間。

Each person who joins the company gets a home-office stipend. This is money they can invest in getting the right chair, monitor, the right desk setup, so they can have the most productive environment for them.

每個加入公司的人都有家庭辦公室津貼。這些錢可以用來買到合適的椅子，顯示器，合適的辦公桌設(shè)置，這樣可以讓他們擁有最高效的工作環(huán)境。

Today, there are just a few companies that are distributed first.

今天，只有少數(shù)幾個公司優(yōu)先選擇分布式辦公。

In a decade or two, I predict that 90 percent of companies that are going to be changing the course of the world are going to function this way.

在10年或20年后，我預(yù)測90%將要改變世界進程的公司會用這種方式運作。

They will evolve to be distributed first, or they'll be replaced by those that are.

它們會率先演化成分布式公司，或者它們會被這類公司替代。

As you think about what you're going to build next, consider how you can tap into global talent, give people autonomy to live and work where they feel they should and still participate fully in whatever it is that you're creating together.

當(dāng)你考慮下一步做什么時，考慮一下如何利用全球人才，給人們選擇生活和工作地點的自主權(quán)，并且仍然能充分參與你們共同創(chuàng)造的任何東西。