Most people can identify their top priority at work. Generally, it will be the part of the job that is most productive for their

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问题     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.
    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 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 MRS A "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 13.8 million "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 $25 billion 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.


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解析 根据题干关键词The new research suggests定位到第二段最后一句New researchsuggests tired workers in demanding jobs start giving up doing those small,but vital,tasksremarkably quickly.(一项新的研究表明,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。)故C项“疲惫的员工有可能停止做一些小而重要的事情”符合题意,为正确答案。
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