By Maxwell Modell

If you want your employees to do their best work, trust them to take care of their needs, which might be taking a Nap!

I’m guessing you want your workplace to be somewhere where your employees can work at their best? Indeed employers have a responsibility to their shareholders, clients AND employees to ensure that people who work for them are provided with the physical space and culture within which they can do their best work. Part of this wellbeing support is keeping people refreshed and energised, and endorsing short power naps can do thisKeeping your employees fully charged through the day is not just about providing on-site gyms and free fruit it’s about giving them the flexibility and autonomy around their working day, including allowing them to nap, without shame or stigma.

 

Indeed in a feature in The Telegraph “How power-napping could revolutionise the workplace”, journalist Anna Hart says that making napping accessible, so called “nap-friendliness could be the truest sign of a genuinely progressive workplace.”

 

The relationship between leadership and employees plays a core role in this. Your employees want to succeed and have the skill sets to do so, however, micromanaging their every move can limit their effectiveness. This is because a core tenet of any successful employer/employee relationship is trust. 

 

Every employee is a different and unique asset to your business with differences in perspective, habits of mind, and working behaviour. To allow them to thrive you need to accommodate these differences. One important consideration is different sleeping habits. Different entrenched bedtime habits, working hours, and sleep disorders can all lead to employees operating on totally different sleep schedules. Not only does this mean that employee performance will peak at different times during the day, but that some employees will be more susceptible to performance-limiting phenomena such as the natural afternoon dip in our circadian rhythm, aka the afternoon slump. This means it is important to ensure employees have the opportunity to rest during the day if they feel they need a boost. Allowing employees to nap is a great solution. This is not authoritarian, saying employees have to nap in the afternoon, but holistic, saying that they can if they feel they need to in order to boost performance. After all, employees have the most intimate understanding of the rest they require.

 

By allowing employees to nap you are trusting them to take control of their performance and rest if they feel they need to, in order to achieve their work goals.

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