Challenging the stigma of workplace napping

Extract

“Why should someone get paid to sleep on the job?” “I don’t have time to nap. I have too much work to do.” “You must be lazy if you take naps.” Despite growing awareness and appreciation of the value of sleep as well as resources, such as books by prominent sleep researchers [1, 2], directed toward general public consumption, there still remains a stigma related to napping. This negative perception is compounded when considering napping during working hours, resulting in frequently heard comments and questions like those above. How can we as sleep scientists, the subject matter experts who appreciate the broad scope of benefits to physical, emotional, and cognitive health conferred by naps, combat the negative optics of workplace napping? We begin by addressing these points of contention.

“Why Should Someone Get Paid to Sleep on the Job?”

While napping is essential for the health and development of young children, for many people it carries into adulthood as a habitual practice. In the United States, however, most working adults are not able to fit a nap into the day, largely due work demands and employer resistance to change workplace culture. Yet outside the United States, there are culturally different attitudes toward napping. In Spain and Italy, mid-afternoon breaks known as the siesta and riposo, respectively, are scheduled during the workday wherein napping often occurs. To suggest such a revision in business hours for the modern US workplace, however, may be unreasonable. Some Asian countries, such as China and Japan, encourage napping on the job. Japanese practice inemuri, sleeping or daydreaming during work, which is viewed as a sign of dedication to work to the point of exhaustion. Japanese businessmen also frequent capsule hotels containing sleep pods in order to reap the recuperative value of sleep during multi-day business negotiations. In the United States, coffee breaks and time spent browsing social media occur in part to boost and re-direct mental focus. What if more employers replaced coffee breaks with scheduled naps? Dr. James B. Maas, who coined the term “power nap,” encourages prioritizing sleep whenever possible, including implementing office napping policies [2]. Employees already seek out covert naps, and internet tips for “sneaking in a nap at work” reveal unsanitary (restroom) and uncomfortable (car) locations as top sites for napping. If employers embraced workplace napping, this option could produce a comparatively more marked and sustained increase in productivity. As many are sleep restricted during the work week, napping may confer performance advantages similar to data reported in the January 2019 issue of SLEEP [3].