配偶影响你对工作的看法

Is your spouse worried that you’re distracted by the office when you’re supposed to be enjoying a Fourth of July barbecue? That concern could have a professional impact that lasts long after the final firecracker has exploded.

你的配偶是否会担心，在你本应享受国庆烧烤的时候办公室的事务会让你分心？这种担心对你职业生涯所造成的影响可能在最后一根爆竹爆完之后仍然久久不散。

A spouse’s perceptions have significant influence on employee satisfaction and firm loyalty, according to a new study. Researchers surveyed the employees of a national consulting firm—and their spouses—and determined from the responses of more than four hundred couples that a spouse can shape how an employee views the company for which he or she works both negatively and positively, contributing to burnout and turnover or fueling commitment and productively. Most of the employees surveyed were male and Caucasian, with a spouse who also worked outside the home and children.

据一份新研究显示，配偶的感受对员工满意度和忠诚度有着深远的影响。研究人员调查了美国一家咨询公司的员工——及他们的配偶——从4百多对夫妻的回答中发现，配偶能够从正反两个方面影响你对你所在公司的看法，可让你筋疲力尽、痛苦难熬或是愈加投入、效率提高。接受调查的大部分员工为男性、白色人种，他们的配偶也在外工作，且育有子女。

“We know that employees have attitudes toward their jobs, toward their companies, ” said Dr. Julie Holliday Wayne of Wake Forest University School of Business, who headed the project. “We care about those attitudes because they influence things like performance, how willing employees are to go above and beyond the call of duty, and how likely they are to quit their jobs. We were interested in, ‘If the spouse develops these attitudes toward the firm, does that influence the employee?’ And what our research tells us is, ‘Yes.’”

“我们知道员工对自己的工作和所在的公司都有想法。”维克森林大学商学院的朱莉??霍丽岱??维恩（Julie Holliday Wayne）如是表示。她同时是这个项目的负责人。“我们关注这些态度，因为它们会影响很多东西，如工作表现、员工在多大程度上乐意做本职工作以外的事，以及他们辞职的可能性有多大。我们感兴趣的是，‘如果配偶对你的公司有自己的看法，这是否会影响到你？’而我们的研究结果告诉我们，‘是的’。”

The study showed that a spouse not only picks up on an employee’s sense of work situation, but also unconsciously observes his or her behaviors during non-work hours, to form opinions that then reinforce the employee’s own notions about the company.

该研究显示，配偶不仅会察觉到你对工作境遇的感受，还会无意识地观察你在非工作时间的表现，并形成自己的看法，而这些看法又会反过来加强你对公司的看法。

“The spouse develops an attitude through the employee, ” said Wayne, and then “the way the spouse feels cycles back and influences the employee.”

“配偶会通过你而形成自己的态度和看法，”维恩表示，“而且配偶的态度会反过来影响你。”

The results of the survey may not shock many people. “When I tell people about this study, ” said Wayne, “they’re like, ‘Yeah, I knew that.’”

这项调查的结果可能不会令很多人吃惊。“当我和别人提起这项调查时，”维恩说，“他们的反应是，‘是的，我早知道了。’”

But the research, which Wayne believes is the first of its kind, adds quantifiable results that researchers hope can translate into a greater understanding of the measurable benefit of family-friendly policies in bringing about a more productive, committed workforce.

不过维恩认为，这项调查是同类型中的先行者，提供了可量化的结果，研究人员希望可以借助这些结果更好地了解：有利于家庭的公司政策将在何种程度上培育一个更高效、更忠诚的员工团队。

The participants revealed a range of positive and negative feelings about a spouse’s work life. Some praised the employer for flexible work schedules and fair compensation—one even cited allowing the survey to be done as proof that the company “cares about associates personally and professionally.”

受访者对配偶的工作既有正面回馈，也有负面情绪。有些人肯定了雇主的弹性工作时间安排和不错的薪资福利——甚至有人表示，公司允许员工接受这一调查，表明公司“从个人角度和职业角度都很在乎员工。”

The observations on the negative side focused primarily on work schedules considered unpredictable or demanding. One woman reported having to reduce her own work hours because her husband’s job didn’t let him adequately help out with child care.

而负面情绪主要集中在工作安排难以预见或要求太高。一名女性受访者表示，因为配偶的工作不允许他有足够的时间帮忙照料子女，她不得不减少自己的工作时间。

Work schedule proves a lightning rod, the study found, as partners “easily observe” when an employee is absent from a family event, or too tired to truly participate, a condition Wayne describes as “present but not present.”

该研究发现，工作时间表好比是避雷针， 因为配偶“总是很容易就发现”你缺席了家庭活动，或因太过劳累而心不在焉——维恩将这一情形描述为“人在心不在”。

“There is a sense that he is always available even when we are on vacation or late at night, ” wrote one participant. “This adds stress to our family as we never know when he will feel the need to respond to an email, call or text. We just went on vacation and he spent several hours on the phone dealing with projects.”

“他总是给人一种感觉：无论什么时候他都在工作，甚至是我们都在度假或到了深夜，”一名受访者表示，“这让我们全家都感觉到压力，因为我们永远不知道他什么时候需要回复邮件、电话或短信。我们只是在度假而已，他却要花上好几个小时讲电话，处理和各种项目有关的事。”

While the study made few distinctions regarding gender, it did find that in dual career households, spouses have higher expectations for family presence from working mothers than from their male partners.

这项调查并没有显示出明显的性别差异，但其却发现，双职工家庭中，对职业母亲在家的时间期望要高于职业父亲。

“A husband who is dissatisfied with his wife‘s work schedule may be more likely to hold negative attitudes toward her firm, ” states the report, “because work interferes with her primary role of caregiver.”

“对妻子的工作安排不满意的丈夫更有可能对妻子所在的公司抱有负面情绪，”该报告称，“因为工作妨碍了妻子作为照料者的主要角色。”

Alternatively, in households where the wife was also a mother and was not employed outside the home, higher levels of frustration with the husband’s demanding or unpredictable work schedule were reported, leading to diminished loyalty to the employer. If a homemaker wife resented her husband’s long hours more than a job-holding one did, it was probably because of a greater need for psychological support, the study’s authors conjectured.

而在妻子是全职主妇的家庭中，如果丈夫的工作要求过高或难以预期，也会产生更高的挫败感，并导致员工对雇主忠诚度不够。该报告的作者们还推测，如果家庭主妇对丈夫工作时间过长的抱怨多过职业女性，那可能是因为家庭主妇更需要心理支持。

The upside for employers? Results suggest that winning a spouse’s good favor—and by extension, deepening an employee’s connection to the company—may not be too difficult. Positives of a work situation (recognition for achievements, etc.) can translate to spousal good feelings about the organization as a whole, whereas negatives (such as bad work schedules or office conflicts) tend to translate to more specific complaints and don’t affect overall impressions of a company.

对雇主的启示？研究结果显示，赢得员工配偶的好感——事实上也就是加深员工和公司的联系——可能并没有那么难。工作境遇中的积极因素（对成就的褒奖等）能够从整体上提升配偶对这个公司的好感，而消极因素（如较差的工作时间安排或办公室冲突等）则可能引发各种抱怨，但不会对公司的整体印象造成影响。

Waynehopes the research will help employers better understand the demands they make on workers, and encourage greater investigation into the impact a work environment can have on employees’ families.

维恩希望这项调查能帮助雇主更好地理解他们对员工所提出的要求，并鼓励雇主加强对工作环境会如何影响员工家庭这一议题的研究。

“These two systems, ” said Wayne, “‘work’ and ‘life outside of work’—they’re not separate and mutually exclusive spheres.”

“工作和工作以外的生活这两套系统，”维恩说，“并不是孤立的、彼此没有联系的。”