Learn HR is a leader in the provision of HR and payroll training and nationally-recognised professional qualifications, and is experienced in advising on common HR and payroll problems. A wide selection of tips and guidance can be seen below. HRzone.co.uk recommends that any tips are taken as a starting point for guidance only. This week: should employees be encouraged to nap at work?
After lunch nap
A couple of us attended a seminar in which the speaker advised us to have a half hour nap during the lunch break. This seems impracticable and in any case would make us figures of fun. Your comments please!
Reply
A brilliant idea. A half hour nap in the middle of the day can add a couple of hours of alertness. I think you have two options. Either designate a quiet room where people can doze of without interruption, or make the practice so fashionable that everyone has a nap at their desk. You need to get senior management engaged in this. Oh, and get a vibrating alarm watch.
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4 Responses
napping
I think its a good idea. I used to work as PA to a creative director, he did this most days if he was not out for business. He was able to concentrate more and was in a far better mood. Most people work such long hours, esp in advertising and marketing roles with huge client pressures and creative changes, its good to freshen up mentally for the 2nd half of the day.
If there was a pill…
…that made you 34% more productive, 100% more alert, gave you up to 8 hours of enhanced energy and reduced the risk of dying of heart disease by 64% without ANY negative side effects would you take it? What’s more as a boss or HR Director would you encourage your staff to take the pill. Inevitably the answer is a resounding YES.
Bad news – there is no pill. Good news there never needs to be. Taking a nap has been scientifically proven to deliver all of the above benefits – and the nap doesn’t even have to be very long. The figures above come from a number of studies. A NASA study on pilots showed that a 26-minute nap in the middle of a long haul flight improved pilot alertness by 100% and overall productivity by 34% in the critical final 30 minutes before landing. Harvard & NASA studied 23,000 subjects in Greece and found that those who took a regular nap / siesta were 36% less likely to die of heart disease. This rose to 64% in working men. Research by Dr Sara Mednick during her time at Harvard also pointed to enhanced energy for up to 8 hours.
Also factor in German research in 2007 showing that even a 6-minute nap improved memory retention by 36% 1 hour after the beginning of nap and you have a powerful case supporting the case for napping during the day. The ideal nap duration is 15 to 20 minutes as it maximises the amount of light sleep we obtain before entering deep sleep. Waking during deep sleep leads to sleep inertia – that groggy feeling we sometimes experience when we wake.
The issue I have with the first reply is the lack of knowledge there is. HR professionals need to understand the current trends in the world that contribute to or detract from the performance of their human capital – sadly the first response shows absolutely no awareness.
We have worked with some of the best known companies in the world with some excellent results. Ignoring fatigue and tiredness among employees is insane. We are sleeping less, the quality of our sleep is falling, there will be plenty of new parents in most organisations who are chronically sleep deprived, there are huge number people walking around with undiagnosed sleep disorders, we are working harder in the current climate and are more stressed.
For those readers who want to understand more – please visit our website (http://www.metronaps.co.uk) especially the pages under information for a wealth of reasons why napping works in a corporate environment.
— Marcus de Guingand is the Managing Director of MetroNaps UK – a fatigue management consultancy that helps companies assess levels of fatigue and train staff on how to beat fatigue through assessment, training, online learning and workplace solutions.
Zzzzz
I think it’s an interesting and possibly useful piece of advice. Our blood pressure tends to drop after lunch (body concentrating on boring but necessary tasks like digestion) so this might be useful. People would probably feel v refreshed afterwards. As for impractical well just give it a try and see, but don’t snore too loud eh!
On a related topic we tend to focus far too much on presenteeism over productivity. Science shows us short regular breaks are necessary to relieve boredom, refresh us etc. Here’s a link to a piece on presenteeism v productivity which includes a link to a v useful piece about binge working. Hope it’s useful – got to dash I’m feeling tired 🙂
http://stopdoingdumbthingstocustomers.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/presenteeism-versus-productivity/
Cheers – Doug
Naps after Lunch
I agree that this practice is very impractical and I’m very surprised that the advice given is the complete opposite. Work isn’t like kindergarten when everyone gets to lie down and have a nap after lunch. Very unprofessional. We are all adults and need to self manage our work/life balance and ways to stay healthy and alert. Napping on employer time is not one of them and from an HR perpsective this isn’t a very good strategic business advice to be giving out. If people need naps after lunch, then you should rethink your HR and hiring practices.