Yahoo Finance Why you should be napping at work
When Arianna Huffington feels the need for a cat nap at work, she heads straight to the couch in her office. While the multimillionaire media mogul used to close the curtains of the glass wall that looks out over the newsroom to snooze, she now leaves them open. She has said that letting her staff know that she’s napping sends a clear message that the act is not only acceptable but also encouraged.
An advocate of daytime naps, the author of The Sleep Revolution is on a mission to make sure workers of the world are well-rested for their physical, mental, and emotional well-being. And, like so many researchers, she sees the link between sleep and performance: having the chance to recharge at work makes us more productive and focused.
According to David K. Randall, author of Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep, even a short nap “primes our brains to function at a higher level, letting us come up with better ideas, find solutions to puzzles more quickly, identify patterns faster and recall information more accurately.”
Sleep science has never been more advanced, with research showing that sufficient shut-eye plays a vital role in people’s lives, benefiting decision-making, cognitive function, and even emotional intelligence.
But at the same time, job demands have never been greater, workplace competitiveness never more intense. Should sleeping on the job really be encouraged?
“Yes, absolutely,” says Kimberly Cote, president of the Canadian Sleep Society, “for a reasonable amount of time. Naps improve alertness, mood, and performance on the job.”
Cote, who’s also psychology and neuroscience professor at Brock University and the director of the university’ Sleep Research Laboratory, says an ideal length for a “power nap” is 20 minutes.
“Depending on the nature of the job, workers need to leave enough time to let the nap-related grogginess dissipate before returning to work,” Cote says. So a nap lasting 20 minutes maximum, followed by some activity for 10 minutes, is ideal.
“Twenty minutes is ideal to get benefits, although a 10-minute nap has been shown to be just as effective in shift workers,” she adds.
Post-nap grogginess is also called sleep inertia. The best thing to do after a short nap to get rid of it is to walk and to be exposed to adequate lighting.
“The deeper you sleep, or depending how deeply you are sleeping when alarm sounds, the more sleepy you will feel,” Cote says. “It takes some time for it to dissipate and for your alertness and performance to recover.”
If you nap for a much longer period, the grogginess lasts longer too, impairing your performance to a greater extent.
“Also, long daytime sleep will take away from the quality of your nighttime sleep,” Cote notes. “We know that a consolidated sleep at night is best for health.”
More offices are introducing “nap zones” along with couches or “pods” for employees to doze off in.
Yet while North America is embracing the nap, other places are trying to do away with it. Spain’s acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced proposals earlier this year to put an end to the two-hour afternoon siesta.
If you’re tempted to nod off under your desk for a short while, though, be sure to find out exactly where your employer stands on the issue.
In 2014, a worker of an Ontario manufacturing plant was fired without pay because he was caught napping on duty several times.
The Ontario Labour Relations Board found that, in fact the man was entitled to termination pay—not because napping was his right but because his employer never made it clear to employees that it was forbidden.
“Employers must clearly communicate policies to employees such that employees understand that, if they engage in certain conduct, their employment will be at risk,” says Kelly O’Ferrall of the employment, labour, and pension group in the Toronto office of Stikeman Elliott. “This is especially important in cases where the employer wants to apply a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy to a particular behaviour in the workplace – sleeping on the job, for instance.”
