SPEAKING FREELY
Don't be lazy, snooze at work
By Matt Young

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

Lunchtime at a state-run Chinese company is slightly laughable.

Two years ago, I found it hard to make it to the cafeteria without being beaned in the head by a shuttlecock - a weighted goose feather contraption used to play something like hacky sack.

Sure, I volunteered to play sometimes, and afterwards quenched my thirst with a nice bite of apple, as drinks weren't readily available in the canteen.

Worn out and dehydrated, I'd want to do what most of my colleagues did thereafter: take a cubicle nap. The amount of Zs being caught by my fellow staff - and probably flies - fell short of the Spanish siesta, but only because workers didn't waste time commuting home.

I just couldn't sleep, though. There are virtues to getting personal with office staff, but publicly bearing my REM behavior is not on my to-do list. I drool, and have been known to bark, especially during dull symphonies.

Also, to me, sleeping on the job is right up there with going to class in your underwear: You just don't do it, except in your dreams.

From most Western employers' perspectives, it surely kills productivity.

Then again, maybe there's something to be learned from state-supported napping. On the opposite end of the spectrum, progressive businesses are beginning to encourage cube sleep, according to About.com management guide F John Reh:

One Connecticut metals company actively encourages napping by its employees to "give them a break or a perk, a napping area where they can unwind". Some companies allow employees to have a bed in their office.

On that last point, I witnessed this first-hand at the state-owned company. I was never entirely clear on this particular employee's position, but he seemed to be some sort of night watchman-cum-receptionist. He was definitely in charge of the copier, fiercely delaying any necessary replication, so I'm not yet convinced extra potential sleep reduces grouchiness.

After all, when I saw the guy's bed, I thought, "Poor bastard, he can never go home."

Nonetheless, Reh argued, one of the reasons for changing attitudes towards sleeping at work is the growing recognition of the cost of sleep deficiency among employees. These include:
Increased errors and accidents
Increased absenteeism
Increased turnover
Decreased productivity
Increased insurance premiums
Increased drug abuse

Excluding those last two problems, the rest are serious issues that companies in China face.

And if Shanghai Pharmaceutical could take back the recent accidental contamination of one if its anti-cancer medications by promoting a little more sleep in the workplace, it probably would.

Now that I think of it, every time I see a construction site with adjacent worker tents and beds, I should be grateful. I probably won't be falling through that new building's floors any time soon.

Mark Rosekind, co-founder and president of Alertness Solutions in Cupertino, told the San Francisco Chronicle that people are "biologically programmed" to be sleepy twice a day, between 3 and 5 am and 3 and 5 pm. Sleeping less than 40 minutes is a sufficient power nap, he noted, and anything more is tantamount to taking NyQuil during the day - unless you can get in a full two hours for a complete deep sleep cycle without the boss batting an eye.

In China, the law has provided for an apres-lunch nap, and reductions in work time have increased productivity. HR Focus magazine noted that according to the Chinese government, there was a 30% increase in productivity since the effective implementation of the shorter, 40-hour working week, in 1996 (down from an average 48 beforehand).

So don't fear of learning bad lessons about productivity from the Chinese workplace. Just take the new terminal expansion at Beijing Capital Airport as a case in point.

According to The Independent:
China has designed and built a new airport terminal double the size of Heathrow's Terminal Five in four years, which is less time than the Heathrow planning enquiry.
China aims to build 97 regional airports in the next decade, of which 45 are scheduled for completion in five years. The UK has not built a new airport since City airport was commissioned in 1987.
The UK frets over replacing nuclear power stations and there is dedicated opposition to a new coal-fired station. China completes a new power station every four days.

How's that for a nation of sleepers on the job?

And that does it. It's 3:15 pm and my new nap alarm just went off, courtesy of the home-office.

Matt Young is founder, editor and publisher of bizCult.com (bizCult | China Business is Culture), which seeks to engage, entertain and educate a community that wants to do better China business.