The elephant in the room

Time magazine recently cited new studies by H.R. consultants and the National Business Group on Health. No consultant would be happy without showing numbers because measuring things is what they do. The upshot is large companies are spending money, or planning to spend money, on encouraging employees to stay, or get, healthy. The usual suspects are targeted: diet and exercise.  This is good, but what’s missing?

Answer: sleep and rest.

In kindergarten children have a nap after lunch. Why not workers? I work in a culture of one. I embrace the afternoon nap. If ever there was a productivity method, it’s napping when you’re tired. It’s rejuvenating and refreshing. When the serotonin levels dip after lunch that’s a signal for brain to rest. And if you’re tired you’re going to make mistakes.

This is a no-cost workplace-wellness practice. Of course, it’s counter-cultural. Even the siesta in Spain has been losing its appeal in a misplaced effort at workforce productivity. Why can’t the likes of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt try to study companies where employees are encouraged to take a nap?

You don’t think there are any? Just try asking Arshad Chowdhury, co-founder of MetroNaps.

When I asked him about the difficulty of getting people to take a nap at work, he said that it was matter of culture. But even large rule-bound companies are making headway. At the time I interviewed Chowdhury, employees at Proctor & Gamble Services in Germany had embraced power napping.

MetroNaps sells a futuristic chair which appeals to office culture. However, employers don’t need to spend huge amounts on employee wellness.  I know this is a heretical statement. They could do well by allocating a rest area and encouraging people to recharge.

We tend to think that everything is solved by technology when just doing something different can work better. Remember how much NASA spent developing a pen that would write upside down in zero gravity? The Russians solved the problem of zero gravity by writing with a pencil.  You don’t always need rocket science.