Tae's Blog

Sleeping at work, where is the border between work and home?

In William Huang’s blog post ‘Sleep at Work?’ he discusses employees purposefully sleeping at work in Japan and its distinctive work environment when compared to Canada. In fact, the trend has a specific term in Japanese, ‘inemuri’, which literally means ‘to be asleep while at work.’

Yes, it seems bizarre as William mentioned, since Canada tends to have a stricter border between work and rest. However, in many Asian countries including Japan, this boundary barely exists for many salarymen.  I believe this could be in part due to frequent unpaid working overtime at night and random emergency calls to cover other employees; this behavior is common and often justified in Asian countries. Since the technological developments allow people to be connected 24/7 with each other, it is very hard to avoid such situations where some employees who always want to get a chance to show off their work ethic in pursuit of a promotion. In other words, they do not want to leave a negative impression on thheir boss by rejecting such calls.

I believe sleeping at work is not only unhealthy for employees, it is also unhealthy for the company since their workers’ productivity cannot be maximized. I have seen news articles about how many companies in South Korea are getting sleeping rooms in the company building for the workers who need rest. This may seem like the company cares about their workers’ rest, however, in fact, it can also mean that the company assign extensive workload so the employees cannot get good enough rest at their home. I believe employee satisfaction and productivity would be maximized in a workplace that encourages a balanced lifestyle, in terms of work and rest.

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