Napping on the job
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2022
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Deborah Weitzmann explores whether a quick nap break at work could make us all more productive.
We head to Beijing where an employee tells us about her lunchtime ritual of napping beside her colleagues, and we’ll discover how the pandemic may have helped squash the stigma of sleeping in Western workplaces.
Kate Mulligan, the boss of RestSpace, a company that designs innovative spaces to help people nod off at work, shows us their sleep pods. Also, Dr Guy Meadows, co-founder and clinical director at Sleep School, tells us practice makes perfect when it comes to napping.
Presenter / producer: Deborah Weitzmann Image: RestSpace sleep pod; Credit: Kate Mulligan
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the colour and the drama to the sounds and the stories. World Football in Qatar is the |
| 0:06.5 | podcast from the BBC World Service taking you behind the scenes of the World Cup. Throughout the |
| 0:12.6 | tournaments, we're meeting the teams, their fans and the people in Qatar, capturing the stories |
| 0:18.3 | and the passion of the nations who are making this competition so exciting. |
| 0:23.0 | For a truly global take on the World Cup, just search for World Football in Qatar, |
| 0:28.3 | wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:33.5 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Deborah Weitzman. |
| 0:39.4 | On today's program, sleeping on the job, and how a quick nap could make us more productive. |
| 0:45.1 | It helps to reduce the number of mistakes, corporates are now realising what was once considered sort of like sleeping is cheating. |
| 0:52.5 | Actually, this is a performance-enhancing tool. We'll head to Beijing, actually this is a performance enhancing tool. |
| 0:55.0 | We'll head to Beijing, where one employee pulls back the curtain on her company's communal nap |
| 1:00.3 | policy. I usually nap for like 30 minutes on the sofa and I feel very comfortable |
| 1:06.7 | sleeping in the office next to my colleagues because everyone does it. |
| 1:12.5 | And we'll discover how the pandemic may have helped to squash the sleep stigma in Western |
| 1:17.7 | workplaces. When people were working from home, we did have the option to potentially not |
| 1:22.6 | take those long commutes and use that time to nap and recharge. And I think now that people are back in the office, |
| 1:28.8 | the nap pods are a really comfortable space that they can race in. That's all coming up here on |
| 1:35.6 | Business Daily. Our rest-based nap and pods are inspired by the Japanese capsule hotels. |
| 1:43.4 | So capsule hotels have been in Japan for |
| 1:45.7 | over 40 years and they provide a very small nook for people to rest. That's Kate Mulligan, the boss of |
| 1:53.0 | rest space, which designs innovative sleep stations for people to use in their working environments, |
| 1:58.9 | from hospitals and offices to transport hubs. |
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