【英语生活】不可忽视工作中的“小事” Managers cannot wash their hands of routine tasks

Most people can identify their top priority at work. Generally, it will be the part of the job that is most productive for their employer: for a merger and acquisitions banker, it could be landing a big deal for a client; for a lorry driver, the punctual delivery of an important consignment; for a hospital doctor or nurse, giving vital treatment to a patient.

But every job is ringed with secondary tasks – the routine but critical stuff covered by codes and guidelines. If such chores are neglected, the consequences may undermine overall success. New research suggests tired workers in demanding jobs start giving up doing those small, but vital, tasks remarkably quickly.

Technology can, of course, take over some basic chores altogether. It is no longer necessary to engage an additional auditor to cross-check the balance sheet, or to insist airline pilots handle every tiny aspect of monitoring and flying their aircraft.

Automated solutions are not as reassuring as they seem, however. Peter Thiel, the entrepreneur, wrote in the FT last week that computers “excel at efficient data processing but struggle to make basic judgments”. In other words, humans are not redundant. But the flesh-and-blood workers who remain now have greater responsibility for more important tasks. If companies pile more work on to them, these weary employees could inadvertently plunge them into disaster.

It is a truism that a tired worker is less productive than a fresh one. But researchers at Wharton and Kenan-Flagler business schools have shown that compliance with routine tasks can fall away within one heavy shift.

Their study’s focus was hand hygiene, healthcare’s mundane but powerful weapon against cross-infection. Such is the importance of sanitisation – when done thoroughly, it can reduce infection by the MRSA “superbug” by 95 per cent – that hospitals have started to monitor compliance, using electronic tags in sanitisers and workers’ badges. Each time a member of staff skips the sanitiser, the omission is logged.

The extraordinarily rich anonymised information from such a system is a treasure trove for big data researchers such as Wharton’s Katherine Milkman. Analysing 13.8m “unique hand hygiene opportunities” for more than 4,000 staff at 35 hospitals, she and her co-authors found that over a 12-hour shift compliance by an average staff member fell by 8.5 percentage points. Lax handwashing, they suggest, could be costing $25bn annually in treatment of unnecessary infection in the US – and leading to 70,000 needless deaths.

As Prof Milkman explained to me last week, the fact that intense work makes it harder to do less important tasks could have profound implications in other walks of life. The study points out that “these deviations pose a threat to the wellbeing of organisations, employees and clients?.?.?.?because such violations can reduce the quality of products produced and services provided as well as creating an unsafe work environment”.

Suddenly, it is a little clearer why the exhausted M&A banker skips parts of the ethical code her bank insists on, or why the tired lorry driver jumps the lights to make it to the depot on time. The work could offer clues about how to make sure the steeplejack always checks his harness, even on the final ascent of the skyscraper, and the weary journalist reads through her story for possible errors on deadline.

The good news is that while the ability to carry out these simple tasks deteriorates swiftly, employers can restore it rapidly by, say, giving workers longer breaks between shifts. Another positive conclusion is that in this case technology seems to help. Monitoring compliance electronically, for all its Orwellian implications, does improve the overall frequency of handwashing.

Hand hygiene is, however, one of those secondary tasks that will by definition always be manual. In other areas, the assumption is that machines have cleared the way for professionals to concentrate on their primary productive job. But there is evidence, highlighted in a recent New Yorker article about pilots’ reliance on their autopilot, that some skills may atrophy as workers become complacent about technological back-up.

I think the new research adds a further twist: if technology makes some vital tasks that used to be central seem routine, workers may also start to neglect them as the day drags on – with potentially dire consequences.

绝大多数人能够认知自己工作中的首要任务。通常，这也是他们工作中最能给雇主带来成效的部分：对并购银行家来说，首要任务是为客户敲定一桩大交易；对货车司机来说，首要任务是将重要的货物准时送达；对医生或者护士来说，首要任务是给予病人至关重要的治疗。

但是每一项工作都涉及次要任务，这些常规而又至关重要的环节包含在准则和指引中。如果忽视了它们，可能会破坏整体上的成功。一项新的研究似乎表明，从事高强度工作的疲惫员工会很快放弃那些细小但却十分重要的任务。

当然，技术能完全接手一些基础的日常事务。我们不再需要一位额外的审计员来核对资产负债表，或者坚持让飞行员处理飞机监控和飞行中的每一个细小的方面。

然而，自动化解决方案并不像它们看上去那样令人放心。企业家彼得?蒂尔(Peter Thiel)最近在英国《金融时报》撰文表示，计算机“善于进行高效率的数据处理，但很难做出基本的判断”。换句话说，人类并不多余。但是，剩下的有血有肉的员工如今为更重要的任务承担了更大的责任。如果公司将更多工作分配给他们，疲惫的员工可能在不经意间使公司陷入灾难。

疲劳的员工的生产率没有精力充沛的员工高，这是不言而喻的道理。但沃顿商学院(Wharton School)和凯南-弗拉格勒商学院(Kenan-Flagler Business School)的研究者向我们展示，即使在一个繁重的轮班期间，人们完成常规性任务的程度也可能逐渐下降。

他们的研究重点是手卫生，这是一种平淡无奇的卫生保健手段，却能有效地对抗交叉感染。消毒如此重要，以至于如果彻底洗手，就能将有“超级病菌”之称的耐甲氧西林金黄色葡萄球菌(MRSA)的感染几率减少95%。医院开始在洗手液分配器和员工胸牌上安装电子跟踪器，以监控医护人员是否遵守这项程序。每当一个员工跳过了洗手程序，就会被记录下来。

对沃顿商学院的凯瑟琳?米尔克曼(Katherine Milkman)这样的大数据研究者来说，这个系统提供的格外丰富的匿名信息是一个宝库。在分析了35家医院逾4000名员工总共1380万次“独一无二的手卫生机会”后，她和她的合著者发现在12小时的轮班期间，员工对手卫生程序的平均遵守度下降了8.5个百分点。他们估测，在美国，疏于洗手引起的不必要的感染每年会造成250亿美元的治疗费用，并导致7万个不必要的死亡病例。

就如米尔克曼教授上周向我解释的那样，高强度工作会使人更难去做不那么重要的工作，这个事实在其他行业也会造成深远的影响。该项研究指出，“这些违反规定的行为对组织、员工和客户的福祉构成威胁……因为这种违规行为降低了产品和服务的质量，并使工作环境变得不安全”。

突然间，某些行为背后的原因变得清楚了一些，比如精疲力尽的并购银行家略过一部分其所在银行坚持的道德准则，或者疲惫的货车司机闯交通灯以按时到达仓库。这项研究工作会提供线索，告诉我们如何确保高空作业工人总是检查身上的保护带，即使在最后一次登上摩天大楼时；或者确保记者在截稿前通读自己的报道以发现可能的差错。

好消息是，尽管人们完成这些简单事务的能力会快速下降，但雇主也可以通过加长轮班之间的休息时间等手段迅速恢复这种能力。另一个积极的结论是，在这种情况下，技术似乎能提供帮助。电子监控员工是否完成这些日常事务，尽管带有一种奥威尔式的意味，却的确能从整体上提高洗手的频次。

不过，手卫生是一种必须手工完成的次要任务。在其他领域，人们假设机器已经为专业人才清除了道路，让他们能专注于自己的首要生产性工作。但证据似乎表明，员工对技术“后盾”过于自满导致一些技能会慢慢退化，《纽约客》(The New Yorker)最近一篇关于飞行员依赖自动驾驶仪的文章凸显了这一证据。

我想这个新研究还增添了另一项曲折：如果技术使一些曾处于中心地位的关键任务变成常规事务，员工在忙碌的上班过程中可能逐渐开始忽视这些任务，进而可能造成严重后果。

译者/许雯佳