2014-04-11 06:23:49
By Michelle Goodman
Last year, the technology start-up AskforTask.com set up a nap room to help
ease fatigue among its web developers who were working long hours, sometimes as
many as 70 per week.
It sounded like the perfect solution for a company that needed to revamp its
web platform fast and keep its developers sharp and focused.
Unfortunately, the plan backfired.
One person in particular spent a little too long in the nap room. What gave him
away was his snoring. Nathan Schokker
It didn t take us long to figure out that naps were counter-productive, said
Nabeel Mushtaq, chief operating officer and co-founder of the 15-person Toronto
company.
Management put a 15-minute cap on power naps, but many employees accidentally
overslept, Mushtaq said. Awaking groggy, a number of them then spent even more
time refilling their coffee mugs or splashing water on their faces in an
attempt to snap back to work form.
The whole process would waste anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour-and-a-half,
Mushtaq said.
Employee productivity took a hit, too. Six months into the nap programme, the
once-efficient team was reaching only 55% of its weekly goals, down some 30
percentage points from before the sleep experiment, Mushtaq explained.
Studies and productivity experts show that power naps and relaxation breaks can
restore energy and focus during the workday, even during the dreaded
mid-afternoon slump. A number of leading companies, in an effort to keep
employees engaged and focused, now offer nap rooms or encourage an afternoon
break away from the desk. Among them: Apple, Nike and Procter & Gamble in the
US, and HootSuite and Intuit in Canada. MetroNaps, a New York company that
produces sleeping pods that look like space-age lounge chairs, counts Google,
Huffington Post and Cisco Systems among its worldwide customers.
Managers eager to appeal to employees concerned with work-life balance sing the
praises of such programmes. But lurking behind the lounge chairs and mood
lighting are some surprising drawbacks that are only now coming to the
forefront.
Not everyone wakes up from a snooze able to bounce back to their previous
energy levels. And not all employees who leave their workstation for a quick
walk or game of table football or table tennis return promptly. Managers who ve
instituted these programmes then find themselves tasked with a job more akin to
that of a kindergarten teacher overseeing a room of toddlers monitoring their
(grown up) team s midday sleep and relaxation habits.
The conundrum, said Nathan Schokker, whose company Talio Group Pty Ltd added a
one-person nap room last year, is determining the best way to make them
available and effective without being excessive and complicated. .
Recommended vs. required rest
For Schokker, director of Talio Group, striking the right balance between
encouraging weary workers to rest and allowing too much time for slacking off
has been the biggest challenge.
To simplify the process, the Brisbane, Australia facility management company
eschews any formal rules about when its 45 employees and contractors can nap
and for how long, Schokker said. However, managers suggest napping only when
absolutely necessary to help keep abuses down.
We feel it destructive to encourage daily naps, said Schokker, who worries an
unnecessary snooze will hamper productivity.
He speaks from experience. I found a few times I used [the nap room] as a
procrastination tool, destroying my productivity for a few hours, he said.
Jacob Stewart strongly disagrees. The co-founder of The Traveling Photo Booth,
a US photo booth rental franchise headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
orders staff to take a short break away from their desk each afternoon.
We ask for at least 20 minutes a day, said Stewart, the company s co-founder.
It s a way to [stop] everyone from burning out.
But practicing what you preach as a manager can prove difficult.
There are certain days when I feel like I need to keep ploughing through work,
said Stewart, who often spends his afternoon break napping or meditating in a
hammock in his office.
Calling out abusers
Of course, there are those employees who take napping on the job too far.
I've had a few instances where one person in particular spent a little too
long in the nap room, particularly on a Monday morning, said Talio Group s
Schokker. What gave him away was his snoring.
Although employee and manager shared a laugh over the transgression, Schokker
told the overzealous napper he needed to spend more time sleeping in his own
bed at night and less time snoozing on the job.
Blue Soda Promo, a promotional products company in Vernon Hills, Illinois,
encourages its staff of more than 100 to take an afternoon screen break away
from their computers around 3:30 or 4 p.m.
As incentive, the office features a mini bowling alley, motorised scooters, a
putting green, basketball hoops, game tables and even a low-lit serenity room
with a couch, love seat and massage chair.
The company doesn t have any hard and fast break rules, said Matt Powers, Blue
Soda s internet marketer. But, Powers said, he and his co-workers know better
than to abandon their workstations at the expense of deadlines or linger too
long in relaxation-land.
An appreciation of the company s work hard, play hard culture and a vigilance
in meeting deadlines has been key to the programme s success.
If [abuses] happen, it s because they lost track of time or maybe relaxation
turned into a nap, Powers explained.
A gentle Where have you been? from a peer or manager is usually all it takes
to ensure a negligent break-taker doesn t do it again, he said.
Relaxing more efficiently
Simon Hudson, founder and CEO of Brndstr, a social branding start-up in Dubai
in the United Arab Emirates trialled a nap room on company premises for two
months before scrapping the idea. Having team members disappear in to a
secluded room to doze was simply too disruptive.
When you re in start-up stage, you need ideas and chats to include everyone,
Hudson said.
Instead, he set up a cluster of sofas, comfortable chairs, a 50-inch television
and a PlayStation console in a corner of his team s large open office.
By being in the main room, a sense of guilt will always kick in, Hudson said.
So far, so good, he said He hasn t set limits, but said employees now tend to
keep their breaks short.
Talia Beckett, managing director of Pink Pearl Public Relations, pushes this
notion of efficient relaxation a step further: she encourages employees to take
a 30- to 60-minute working break around 3:30 each day. This entails grabbing
a stack of fashion, beauty and baby magazines (industries in which the
Vancouver, British Columbia, communications firm works), finding a comfy chair
(or when weather permits, heading outside) and flipping through the pile.
Although this is still technically work, it doesn't feel like it, Beckett
said. It makes our small team feel much more relaxed and we always come back
to our desks with new ideas.
And at AskforTask, Mushtaq has transformed the company s productivity-killing
nap room into an innovation lounge featuring reclining chairs, low lights,
music and a television. The idea is for employees to spend a few minutes
relaxing and socialising as needed, but not snoozing.
In just six weeks, he says employee productivity has been restored to
pre-nap-room levels.
Just by changing the name and theme of the room we were able to see our
employees achieving over 85% of their weekly goals, Mushtaq said.