March 31, 2008
Guru woke with a start the other afternoon when his wind-up wireless crackled with the news that six in 10 people have fallen asleep at work.
It then went into a review of the England football team’s performance in Paris, during which it seemed all 11 players dozed into a terminal slumber, but it turns out the items were unrelated.
Actually, it appeared that the headline statistic of six in 10 people sleeping at work was unrelated to the truth, which is that 63% of employees surveyed said they had slept ‘or felt sleepy’ in the workplace. As anyone who has ever attended a chief exec’s financial update meeting will attest, it is often hard not to feel sleepy in the workplace.
But this did not stop employment law firm Peninsula from sexing up the results of their poll to make the headlines. To Guru, the big news is that 37% of workers have never felt remotely sleepy at work. Are these bionic people? What is their secret? HR professionals need to track them down and employ them ahead of their weak human counterparts as quickly as possible.
Guru imagines a workplace where coffee is not carried everywhere, sugary snacks decay slowly on the window ledge and 14-hour shifts are commonplace. Productivity would soar and grievances caused by tired, irate workers would be a thing of the past.
Eschewing Guru’s suggestion, however, Peninsula head of diversity Deb Gibbons had her own “crazy idea”.
“One incentive to consider would be to offer workers a short snooze break,” she said. “While this may seem like a crazy idea it could increase productivity and possibly prevent an accident in the workplace.”
Yeah, sure, unless something falls on to someone who could have avoided it had they been awake.
