We’ve known for years that a tired worker is a non-productive worker. Well, now Harvard and the University of Florida both agree.

The Harvard study showed that the ability of employees to be productive was improved with a good night’s sleep and found that a midday nap reverses information overload while the U of F study reported a lack of sleep not only makes people tired and cranky but also causes them to dislike and even hate their jobs the next morning.

The French seem ready to jump on board. In fact, the idea of taking a power nap is part of a campaign to encourage them to sleep better.

Understandable considering the research completed by a UK firm ()  which found “tired employees responsible for legal errors, road accidents, confidential material being sent out by email, workers losing their temper with colleagues, medical mishaps, important information being incorrectly deleted from files, and safety procedures being breached.”

There’s even a firm in New York, MetroNaps, that is prepared with ‘shut-eye pods’ in order to provide tired employees with twenty minute naps.

All joking aside, sleep deprivation and work mix about as well as oil and water. And since the stress and strain of long hours is likely to take its toll, why not provide employees with a brief 15 to 20 minute nap to refresh their brain cells and improve their productivity?

After all, the National Institute of Industrial Health in Japan found that for workers who took a 15-minute nap during the post-lunch period, has an alertness that was “significantly higher in the afternoon after the nap than after no nap.”

So let’s tip our hats to sleeping on the job. And remember: if you want more productive employees, perhaps you should let them sleep on it.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Job Satisfaction, Benefits. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.