MNN - Mother Nature Network

Did you know today was National Public Sleeping Day? Until a few days ago, I didn’t know that such a “holiday” existed but evidently it does. I don’t know the origin of the day, but in honor of a day dedicated to catch some shut-eye in public, I decided to gather a list of resources that discuss the benefits napping on the job and napping in general. No, I’m not talking about accidentally falling asleep at your desk but work-sanctioned power naps.

 

Harvard researchers discovered that if a worker completed a task and then later took a nap and dreamt about the task, the task was completed more quickly the second time.  

 

The dawn of the Internet age led to longer work hours because it’s always business time somewhere in the world. Longer hours are leading more companies to offer nap rooms as a perk. According to the Society of Human Resource Management, 6 percent of workplaces had a napping room in 2011. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you look back just a decade, napping rooms were essentially unheard of.

 

“Volunteers who took a 100-minute nap before launching into an evening memorization task scored an average of 20 percentage points higher on the memory test compared with people who did the memorization without snoozing first.” With a statistic like that, it should be easy to convince business owners that napping on the job is a good business move.

 

No space for a napping room? No problem! Offer your employees nap mats and eye masks instead. After a quick nap your employees will reap the benefits of napping.

 

Different companies handle workplace napping differently. Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t have an official napping on the job policy but doesn’t mind when employees take an afternoon siesta. Google, on the other hand, has napping pods spread throughout its campus.

 

If you live in a nap-friendly workplace, these four tips will help you figure out how to get the most out of your afternoon power nap.