Office workers are being treated to a new game: musical chairs.

        By shifting employees from desk to desk every few months, scattering those who do the same types of jobs and rethinking which departments to place side by side, companies say they can increase productivity and collaboration.                    
        公司方面表示，通過讓員工每幾個月調換一次座位、將從事同類工作的員工分散開來以及重新考慮讓哪些部門坐在一起等方式，他們能夠提高生產率並促進合作。
        Proponents say such experiments not only come with a low price tag, but they can help a company's bottom line, even if they leave a few disgruntled workers in their wake.

        In recent years, many companies have moved toward open floor plans and unassigned seating, ushering managers out of their offices and clustering workers at communal tables. But some companies -- especially small startups and technology businesses -- are taking the trend a step further, micromanaging who sits next to whom in an attempt to get more from their employees.
        近年來，許多公司轉向開放空間格局，不指定固定座位，引導管理者走出辦公室，並將員工聚在公用辦公桌旁。但一些公司（尤其是小型初創公司和科技公司）將這種趨勢又向前推進了一步，它們對座位安排進行微觀管理，以提高員工的生產率。

        'If I change the [organizational] chart and you stay in the same seat, it doesn't have very much of an effect,' says Ben Waber, chief executive of Sociometric Solutions, a Boston company that uses sensors to analyze communication patterns in the workplace. 'If I keep the org chart the same but change where you sit, it is going to massively change everything.'
        Mr. Waber says a worker's immediate neighbors account for 40% to 60% of every interaction that worker has during the workday, from face-to-face chats to email messages. There is only a 5% to 10% chance employees are interacting with someone two rows away, according to his data, which is culled from companies in the retail, pharmaceutical and finance industries, among others.
     
        Companies should think carefully about whom they put where, according to experts who study office design and workplace psychology. Grouping workers by department can foster focus and efficiency, says Christian Catalini, an assistant professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, but mixing them up can lead to experimentation and the potential for breakthrough ideas.    
        麻省理工、斯隆管理學院的助理教授 Catalini 表示，讓員工按部門就座有助於提高專注程度和工作效率，但讓不同部門的員工混坐能鼓勵員工大膽嘗試，還能激發可產生突破性創意的潛力。

        MODCo Media, a New York advertising agency, has tested three different seating arrangements over the past few years. For about six months, the company intermingled its accountants and media buyers, hoping they would begin to absorb each others' skills through 'osmosis' and 'overhearing phone calls.'
        紐約廣告公司MODCo Media在過去幾年裡試用了三種不同的座位安排。該公司讓會計和媒介採購員混坐了約六個月，希望他們能通過“耳濡目染”和“偷聽電話”來相互借鑒。
        The experiment ended up saving MODCo 'a couple hundred thousand dollars a year,' says CEO Erik Dochtermann, but it turned out badly for the accountants. The media buyers began to understand the financial side of the business so well that MODCo no longer needed a full accounting department. Now, the media buyers 'do the accountancy on the fly' and the company's chief financial officer checks their work, says Mr. Dochtermann.
        該公司首席執行長Dochtermann 表示，這項實驗最終讓公司“一年節省了幾十萬美元”，但對會計來說卻成了壞事。媒介採購員能夠很好地理解業務的財務面，好到MODCo不再需要財務部的人馬。Dochtermann稱，媒介採購員現在會“隨手做做會計工作”，公司的首席財務長會檢查他們的工作。
        Other seating configurations have helped inspire new products and expedited the training of new employees, he says.

        At travel website Kayak.com, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Paul English has joked about developing an algorithm to capture all that goes into devising his seating plan for the engineering team.
   旅遊網站Kayak.com聯合創始人兼首席技術長 English 戲稱，要開發一種演算法來捕捉決定工程師團隊座位設計方案的所有因素。
        He uses new hires as an excuse to alter the existing layout and thinks carefully about each worker's immediate neighbors. He takes into account everything from his employees' personalities to their political views to their propensity for arriving at work early -- or, more important, their propensity for judging colleagues who arrive late.
        他以新聘員工為理由對現有的佈局進行調整，並仔細斟酌每一位員工的鄰座。他將員工性格、政見、提前上班的傾向（還有更重要的一點是評價同事遲到行為的傾向）等種種因素納入考慮範圍。
        'If I put someone next to you that's annoying or there's a total style clash, I'm going to make your job depressing,' he says.
     
        Young Chun, a product designer at Kayak, is one of Mr. English's ambassadors in his pursuit of an office with 'a balance of energy.' A self-professed member of the 'loud' contingent of Kayak employees, she was recently dispatched to the mobile group, where she estimated 90% of the workers were quiet, to get them to be more vocal.
       Young Chun 自詡為Kayak員工中“愛說話”小分隊成員，最近她被派遣到移動業務組（她估計這裡90%的員工都很安靜），任務是讓他們多說點話。
        'The first week that I was down there I was like, 'Oh my god, I could hear a pin drop here,'' she says.
        It took a few weeks, but Ms. Chun says she was able to get the group to open up and start chatting. Her mission accomplished, she was soon switched to another section of the office.

        Aspects of a worker's disposition can, in fact, be contagious, according to Sigal Barsade, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. 'People literally catch emotions from one another like a virus,' she says. Her research has found that the least-contagious emotional state is one marked by low-energy and sluggishness. The most contagious is a calm, relaxed state -- which she nicknamed 'the California condition.'
   People with similar emotional temperaments work best together, Ms. Barsade says. But if a manager is trying to get a stressed-out worker to brighten up, the best strategy is to surround her with lots of cheerful, energetic people.    

        Constantly shuffling people around has its consequences, however. Ms. Barsade says that moving from desk to desk can make workers feel like they have little control over their environment. And some seating experiments can cause a backlash.    

        For about four years, employees at HubSpot Inc., a marketing-software company based in Cambridge, Mass., switched seats randomly every three months. The seating strategy was meant to reflect the lack of hierarchy at the company, which it says was especially helpful in recruiting Millennials. Eventually, the company added some structure to the arrangement, splitting workers into loud and quiet groups.                            
        But when HubSpot decided to group its executives in one part of the office, the employee feedback was negative. The executives felt more efficient and liked being able to chat without having to arrange formal meetings, but the employees felt the higher-ups were too far removed. The setup was reversed after six months.            
        但當HubSpot決定讓高管集中坐到辦公室的一處區域時，員工給出的回饋卻是負面的。高管們感覺這樣坐效率更高，他們還喜歡無須安排正式會議就能隨意聊天，但員工們覺得上司們高高在上。該公司在六個月後取消了該安排。

        Employees have the moving process 'down to a science,' says HubSpot Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Dharmesh Shah, unplugging their phones and rolling file cabinets to their new spots swiftly.
        HubSpot首席技術長兼聯合創始人 Dharmesh Shah 稱，員工們對換座位這件事已經駕輕就熟了，他們會迅速拔下電話，將檔櫃推到新的座位上。
        But having grown to more than 600 workers, the company is facing a new problem: no one can remember who sits where.
       但該公司的員工如今已經超過了600人，目前他們正面臨著一個新問題：沒人能記得住誰坐在什麼地方。