Boost Employee Productivity In 20 Minutes: My Experience With Nap Rooms At CES 2018

Happy Monday. This is John Garret coming to you with another episode of the Green Apple Slices where every Monday morning I bring in my partner in crime co-host Rachel Fisch. Rachel, how are you doing?

Rachel: Good. How are you doing, John?

John: Fresh off your birthday weekend.

Rachel: My birthday week.

John: Birthday week, my bad. But this article I thought was really great. Actually, I think leads right into us talking about getting older. It was an article on forbes.com by LaKisha Greenwade and it was “Boost Employee Productivity in 20 Minutes: My Experience with Nap Rooms.” Wow.

Rachel: I don’t know how I feel about this.

John: Yeah, I’m not sure how I feel about it either. I mean I’m all for naps but —

Rachel: Here’s the problem and for anyone who knows me well enough and my napping situation, I have never napped for 20 minutes on purpose. If I go for a nap like I’m out for like two hours at least. So I’m kind of fascinated with this new com that’s mentioned here which is supposedly able to give you a power nap experience within a pretty short amount of time but again, because I haven’t tried it, I’m kind of skeptical that I would fall asleep and then miss my next three meetings.

John: Yeah, we’ll see you tomorrow, Rachel. All right. According to sleep.org, 29% of workers report falling asleep or becoming very sleepy at work and I’m sure that 99% of those people are in accounting, unfortunately. Then it says that it costs the U.S. $63 billion each year in lost productivities. So Canada, I mean who knows?

Rachel: Yeah. What I have seen is we do have a windowless room in our office and I wasn’t feeling very well except that I didn’t drive to work. I take the train. I needed to get through the afternoon and so went in there for like 15-20 minutes. I did not sleep but it was nice to just close my eyes to kind of decompress and relax a little bit and then get back at it. But other than that, I just don’t — sorry, I just don’t trust myself to actually start dosing off.

John: Right. Well, I could see where that is but it’s nice that there is that room to be able — I guess it’s not designated for that.

Rachel: I don’t think it’s there for that but when you go through the article there is some good stats and information here when it talks about what is the ROI for naps? Somebody actually calculated this. It basically just comes from being better rested, increases productivity, better performance, better relationships, employee retention, stuff like that. Just as you mentioned there’s an option, right? If you’re not feeling well instead of going home and losing the rest of that day, you can kind of have a quiet place to reset and keep going.

John: Right, absolutely. But also talks about how smaller businesses and maybe ones that are more pliable, if you will, might be able to give this a go and see what happens because it differentiates yourself at least and it shows that you’re investing in your people and saying that look, I understand that maybe some of you are new parents or some of you have long commutes but some of you have long commutes and so we understand that we want you to do a good job and we want you to be here but taking a powernap here and there, if that makes you do better output, then that’s great.

Rachel: If you’re physically capable of it, go right in.

John: Exactly. If your name isn’t Rachel Fisch then feel free to give it a go. Right. I thought it was interesting. I thought it was also interesting how many people are falling asleep at work and how much that’s costing people.

Rachel: See I’ve never done — yeah, I’ve never done that. I think it is why it’s like okay, that’s interesting that this is happening but I’ve never actually fallen asleep at work or been terribly tempted to do.

John: No, I think it’s an interesting concept. So if you guys want to read the article, feel free to go to greenapplepodcast.com and you can read the two-page article there. It’s not super long but really good stuff in there.

Yeah, feel free to hit subscribe so you don’t miss us every Monday and then on Wednesdays with an interview and someone different every week.

Hope you have a good week, Rachel, and you’re well rested and all of you birthday wisdom bleeds off onto everyone else and I guarantee that now in your office that no window room is blocked off by everybody else taking naps. So have a good week.

Rachel: You too. Talk to you later, John.