Enhance Workplace Alertness With Napping

Napping is one of the most effective alertness strategies shift workers can employ.  Yet this is a very contentious issue both among employees and managers.  The prevailing view is that you're being paid to work and not sleep and as long as you are at your job, you should be awake.  Yet every shift work employee can attest to sleeping while at work and most managers either know or have found employees sleeping while at work.  In some workplaces, this results in dismissal or at least discipline of the employee.

What goes on in many organizations is "random napping," that is, employees who are extremely fatigued or who cannot overcome the strong physiological need to sleep, will simply fall asleep at their station or find a quiet spot where they can get a nap without anyone knowing.  This presents several problems, not the least of which is that they may injure themselves and others.  Certainly productivity suffers.

Some organizations, however, have recognized the pitfalls of random napping and have instituted "controlled napping" instead.  They have done this because they understand the value of napping in increasing employee alertness and productivity and decreasing the potential for errors and accidents. They have taken a proactive stance and determined how they can incorporate napping in an appropriate way.

Controlled napping procedures usually require that:

• the nap be no longer than 20 minutes

• the nap be taken at a designated nap area away from the work station

• (this can simply be a recliner or something as sophisticated as the Japanese sleeping rooms)

• only one nap per shift be taken

• the employee inform a designated person of their need for a nap

• the employee ensure that someone is covering their station

These policies and procedures ensure that employees don't sleep randomly and that work and other employees are not jeopardized.  Yet the employee can return to their station more alert and able to carry on with their work.

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