KARLA PORTER

There’s a grass­roots move­ment going on in the twit­ter­sphere to amend HR pol­icy to include power naps. You know, to calm the crankies. One sim­ply innocu­ous tweet about hav­ing just taken a nap spurred a hash­tagged thread of con­ver­sa­tion that got me thinking..

You’ve heard the sto­ries about employ­ees “caught” nap­ping on com­pany time. Every­thing from being laughed at to a ver­bal lash­ing  or actual admin­is­tra­tive dis­ci­pline ensue.

But, HRe­cruit­ing Alert recently reported on Pew research indi­cat­ing that 33% of those earn­ing six fig­ures nap reg­u­larly on the clock.  And appar­ently there is a whole niche indus­try around the prac­tice. There’s a Pow­er­Nap Nap­Ma­chine which touts 3 hours of deep sleep in just 20 min­utes and a Power Nap Kit™ with ver­sions for teens, col­lege stu­dents and adults.

What about the time hon­ored Latin Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of the siesta? It’s actu­ally a pretty cool con­cept. Work days are split into 2 parts with a 2 hour break in the mid­dle. Go home, have lunch, take a nap, see your fam­ily.… Of course it might not work well for long dis­tance com­muters. But, pro­gres­sive com­pa­nies could have quiet rooms.

Accord­ing to the National Sleep Foun­da­tion, “more than 85% of mam­malian species are polypha­sic sleep­ers, mean­ing that they sleep for short peri­ods through­out the day. Humans are part of the minor­ity of monopha­sic sleep­ers, mean­ing that our days are divided into two dis­tinct peri­ods, one for sleep and one for wake­ful­ness.” They go on to say that it’s is not clear that this is the nat­ural sleep pat­tern of humans. I don’t put myself above other mam­mals, espe­cially when it comes to napping.

What about the stig­mas attached to nap­ping like lazi­ness, a lack of ambi­tion, and low stan­dards or that it’s only for chil­dren, the sick and the elderly? With a whole foun­da­tion that rec­og­nizes the ben­e­fits it seems that nap­ping just needs a bet­ter PR campaign.

Some of today’s employ­ers per­mit nap­ping at work. More than one third of Amer­i­cans (34%) say that their work­place per­mits nap­ping dur­ing breaks at work, with 16 per­cent report­ing that their employer even pro­vides a place for them to nap. An addi­tional 26 per­cent say they would nap on a break at work if their employer were to allow it.

If you work in one of the 66% of work­places that don’t per­mit nap­ping on the clock I want to help. Here’s a sam­ple Work­place Nap­ping Pol­icy I devised. It can be cus­tomized to meet the needs of your work­place. If you’re not in a posi­tion to imple­ment com­pany pol­icy you can for­ward this post to whomever is and request they review it for con­sid­er­a­tion in your workplace.

Work­place nap­ping is a com­pany ben­e­fit that rec­og­nizes that sim­i­lar to diet and exer­cise, sleep needs to be an inte­gral ele­ment of a healthy lifestyle. The impact of not get­ting good sleep is far reach­ing and has Amer­i­cans com­pro­mis­ing their pro­duc­tiv­ity, safety, health and rela­tion­ships – both on the job and at home.

Employ­ees are pro­vided the oppor­tu­nity to nap dur­ing work hours on their paid break with­out fear of being stig­ma­tized as lazy, unam­bi­tious or lack­ing in stan­dards. Nap­ping is per­mit­ted in areas where the work of oth­ers will not be affected such as pri­vate offices, break areas and quiet rooms. It is the respon­si­bil­ity of employ­ees to mon­i­tor their nap time via per­sonal alarms to ensure they do not go over their allot­ted break time.

If you don’t now how to power nap wik­i­How offers some great tips.

National Nap­ping Day is each year the Mon­day after Day­light Sav­ings kicks in. It will be cel­e­brated March 9, 2010.

I will be celebrating.

Is nap­ping allowed where you work? if not, how do you man­age to nap when you need it?