“This is 2017. Every country in the world has embraced micro-nap in business… All of them? No! A country where the micro-nap holds a negative image is missing out on its profits, and life is not easy for French employees and their employers, to whom we refuse well-being and productivity…” Although it’s not the promising beginning of a famous comic book, these few lines underline the French anomaly in terms of «power nap». Regardless, many countries have adopted it and here is a small world tour of the micro-nap.
In search of lost time
In China, rest has been written into the Constitution and Chinese workers do not deprive themselves of using it in their workplace. While France associates this practice with laziness and “lost time”, it is in fact a matter of allowing employees to “recharge their batteries” to be more efficient… and therefore to buy time! A logic that is also followed in Japan, where power naps are encouraged by managers, according to a simple calculation: performance at work is not measured by the number of hours spent in the office, but rather by the quality of what is done there. Quality trumps quantity, and micro-nap trumps unproductive relentlessness.
Europe lagging behind
In Europe, the opposite is true: napping is an unusual and even threatening practice in countries where it has traditionally been installed. At the beginning of 2016, the announcement of a possible end of the Spanish «siesta» by the government of Mariano Rajoy was the subject of a heated debate even though fewer and fewer Spaniards seemed to take “siestas”. Italy could also be concerned even if the power nap is longer than 20 minutes which gives a real break from the working day.
In fact, more than “managing fatigue”, as the Australian system suggests, or taking a “radical” break, micro-naps allow us to increase our rest, well-being, productivity and as a form of compromise… Little by little, the micro-nap is starting to lose its taboo and make an appearance in American and French companies.
And so we give you a solution: let’s micro-sleep!
Our Nap references :
http://www.liberation.fr/futurs/2003/05/12/japon-repos-obligatoire_433398
CABON Philippe (2015), ” Des approches prescriptives aux systèmes de gestion du risque fatigue “, Regards d’ergonomes sur le travail, 17-2