The Hindu Business Line : Nap time at the workplace

I PROMISED the salesperson behind the counter in the jewellery shop on Mada Street near the Kapaleeswarar Temple in Chennai that I would be back the next morning to buy the item I was interested in. As I was leaving, I thought I would check with him what time the store opened. `Around 10, 10.30,' he replied. Having been corrupted by the business world, I did not think a 30-minute range made sense as an opening time. I asked him if it was 10 or 10.30, how could it be both? He looked at me quizzically.

For a culture that believes in reincarnation, and has a unit of time as vast as a `yuga,' what is 30 minutes?

Although Gandhi was disapproving of our tendency to be lax about time, Indians have a reputation for not keeping appointments precisely. We even joke about it and call it Indian Standard Time. It is part of our culture. And we are not alone in this. Several cultures, including Middle Easterners and Latin Americans, have a similar attitude to adhering to a time commitment.

So, when we give an appointment to a visiting foreign delegation, can we put an asterisk next to the time with an explanatory footnote that says that we subscribe to polychronic time systems and these times are approximate? That would be truly aligning our business practices to our cultural traits. In a global scenario where we are enjoined to be respectful of the local cultures as we do business across the planet, let us just be upfront about it and not have to be apologetic next time an event begins an hour late.

I wish to make a case for another `cultural' practice, namely napping. Our colonial masters were sharp to recognise the merits of an afternoon nap as they sweated to be productive under the Indian sun. Being masters, they furnished their government offices suitably. Desi officials have retained some of those choice perquisites.

You just have to visit the office of a senior level bureaucrat and you will see that `easy chair' just beyond a room divider, into which our under-worked civil servant will stretch-out to refresh himself so as to be ready for his afternoon schedule.

A public servant friend of mine who was not senior enough to warrant one of these specially furnished offices used to catch his forty winks at his own desk.

He would rest his head on the palms of his hands with the elbows anchored on the desk for ten minutes post-prandial and that was enough sleep for him to keep going till 7 pm. (I tried it and ended up with a sprained neck!)

The Spaniards and Mexicans are debating this subject in their societies. The afternoon `siesta' was an inherent part of Spain's work culture, where a typical work day goes from 9 am to 8 pm; manageable, given a two to three hour break in the afternoon. Shops would shut, and the streets deserted as Spaniards went home for lunch and a nap. But there are other twists to this tale. With several people now living far away from work, going home to sleep is not feasible for all. So nap time in Spain has melded into a long lunch at a restaurant and it is anyone's guess how productive you can be after a two hour lunch break (with a couple of martinis thrown in). Some just stay in the office, working through the afternoon, and continue to work late in the evening when the others return.

Studies are showing that Spaniards are getting less and less sleep in the night, are missing their afternoon naps, and are becoming less effective in their work. Restaurants open only at about 8 pm for business in the night, as I discovered to my chagrin, wandering the streets of Madrid for an early meal. Needless to say, the children are in bed by the time daddy and mommy get home.Science can come to our rescue on this one. An article in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society argues that people between 55 and 85 years of age who take a short nap between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. performed better on tests of mental ability. They also had little difficulty falling asleep at night. Medical researchers have for long claimed that there is a biological tendency to sleep in the middle of the day, just like there is to sleep at night. Sleeping from 30 to 120 minutes early in the afternoon is refreshing and also helps to be more productive after.

What a pity that rather than the rest of the world screaming for a siesta, the globalisers in Spain are insisting on their organisations eliminating siesta hour so as to be integrated with the world. That is how we can stay competitive, they insist. But they forget that the business world has already adjusted to work taking place in different time zones and has adjusted its work practices to take advantage of that.

Honda had two design teams, one in the US and one in Japan, working simultaneously on one car model so that when one team went home, the other was eagerly working on it halfway around the world. Call centres in India know the advantage of differential time zones. Why not split the working day within the country into two zones? Meanwhile, here is a new business opportunity that has already been grabbed by an entrepreneur in New York.

A firm called MetroNaps offers you space to catch a mid-day nap in their office at the Empire State building. For $13.45 (Rs 605), you can sleep for 25 minutes in a specially designed chair called a sleep `pod' that is not a bed but more like a modern-day easy chair with a cover (like the visor of a helmet) that allows you some privacy and shuts out the light.

Additional services provided by the firm includes gently waking you, providing you a snack when you wake-up, and a towel to freshen up. The pods are available for installation in your office for a monthly rental of $350 (Rs 15,750). Why not reserve adjacent pods for your next business meeting, and negotiate after a relaxed snooze? It may even be tax-deductible as a business expense.

(The author is a professor of international business and strategic management at Suffolk University, Boston, US. His Internet address is cgopinat@suffolk.edu)

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