There is a cartoon by Mark Anderson of the Devil saying to a worried-looking junior devil: “No, that’s fine. Morale is supposed to be bad.”

morale：士气，斗志

Most managers this side of Hell will tell you that morale in their organisations is excellent, but it usually isn’t. People like a moan and, however attached they are to their jobs, there is almost always something they don’t like: clueless bosses, malfunctioning computer systems, too much bureaucracy.

clueless：无线索的；愚蠢的

malfunctioning：出故障的

bureaucracy：官僚主义；官僚机构；官僚政治

Usually, those complaints stay inside the organisation, unless disaster strikes and an outside inquiry reveals how dysfunctional the set-up was.

dysfunctional：不正常的，不良的，不和睦的

set-up：组织；机构

So it takes courage to investigate your own employee morale and publish the results for the rest of society to see, as three prominent organisations – the UK Treasury, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Apple – have done.

US Department of Homeland Security：美国国土安全部

None of the three investigations was unprompted. The Treasury inquiry was internal, but was carried out at the urging of the National Audit Office and the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, which wanted to ensure lessons were learnt after the financial crisis.

unprompted：自发的；未受提示的

at the urging of：在…的敦促下

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