Do you want to be more productive at work? Make sure you sleep at least seven hours a night — but smoke and drink as much as you want.

你想在工作中更富有效率吗？那么你要确保每晚至少睡够7个小时——但是你可以尽情地抽烟和喝酒。

A study of more than 21,000 employees has found a strong connection between lack of sleep and lower productivity at work. But, to the researchers’ surprise, smoking and alcohol consumption seem to make no difference.

一项对超过2.1万名员工所做的研究发现，缺少睡眠与工作效率低下有着很强的关联。但是，令研究员意外的是，抽烟和饮酒似乎没有影响。

Vitality¹ Health, a UK health and life insurance company, commissioned research organisation² Rand Europe and the University of Cambridge to study factors that affect workers’ productivity. They used data taken from companies that took part in the insurer’s “Britain’s Healthiest Company” competition.

英国健康和人寿保险公司Vitality Health委托研究机构兰德欧洲(Rand Europe)和剑桥大学(University of Cambridge)，对影响劳动者生产力的因素进行研究。它们使用的数据来自参加Vitality Health举办的“英国最健康公司”比赛的公司。

The researchers found that employees who slept for six hours or less a night were significantly less productive than those who slept for seven or eight. Eleven other factors were also correlated to productivity, defined as absenteeism or “presenteeism” — when people went to work but did not perform at their best. But the researchers noted³ that correlation⁴ did not necessarily mean causation.

研究员发现，每晚睡眠6个小时或更少的员工，工作效率明显低于睡眠时间达到7或8个小时的员工。还有另外11个因素也与工作效率相关，被界定为缺勤或“假性出勤”（指一个人虽然在上班但状态不佳）。但研究员指出，这种相关性不一定代表因果关系。

Employees who were physically⁵ inactive, had financial worries, mental health problems or musculoskeletal problems all reported lower productivity, as did those who said they were bullied⁶ at work or were under unrealistic time pressures. But other factors did not seem to have any link with productivity, including smoking, alcohol consumption and severe obesity⁷.

缺少锻炼、存在经济烦恼、有心理健康问题或是肌肉骨骼问题的员工均报告他们的工作效率较低，那些自称在工作中被欺凌或是承受不现实的时间压力的员工同样如此。但是，抽烟、饮酒和过度肥胖等其他因素与工作效率似乎并不存在关联。

“It is something we discussed at length when we were going through the data, because we were quite surprised,” said Shaun Subel, Vitality Health’s director of strategy.

“这是我们在整理数据时详细讨论过的问题，因为我们都相当惊讶，”Vitality Health策略主管肖恩•苏贝(Shaun Subel)称。

He said the study only measured short-term effects, while habits such as smoking and drinking could cause employees health problems in the longer-term, which would then have an impact on their work. “The data gives us a powerful new way to say to companies that you can almost set your objective: if you are targeting just short-term productivity effects, these are the most important drivers you should probably be looking at. If you are concerned about the long-term health of your employees, these are the drivers,” Mr Subel said. “Importantly you’ve got companies who want to do both.”

他称，这项研究只衡量短期影响，而吸烟饮酒等习惯长期而言可能会引起员工的健康问题，这或将影响他们的工作。“这些数据给我们提供了一个有力的新方式来告诉公司，它们可以设定这样的目标：如果只是想提高短期生产力，这些就是你可能应该关注的最重要的影响因素；如果公司关心员工的长期健康，那些就是影响因素，”苏贝称，“重要的是有很多公司想要两者兼顾。”

In the US, where companies have large healthcare liabilities, there are significant financial reasons to want to improve workers’ health. Some companies are experimenting with wearable activity monitors for their employees to encourage them to exercise more.

在美国，公司对员工医疗负有较大责任，希望改善员工健康有着重要的经济原因。目前有一些公司在员工身上试验可穿戴活动监测器，以此鼓励他们加强锻炼。

But the study did not find a relationship between an employer’s provision of health or wellness programmes and their employees’ productivity.

但是，上述研究并未发现雇主提供的员工健康计划与员工生产力之间存在关联。