WeWork considers nap rooms for co-working spaces
WeWork, the $16bn global shared workspace rental group, is considering bringing nap rooms to its co-working facilities after the phenomenon gained momentum in China recently. WeWork co-founder Miguel McKelvey announcemed that although modern work culture has been conditioned to be less accepting of informal approaches, there is growing recognition of the psychological and professional advantages of nap rooms. Following a 2011 Journal of Sleep study showing that lack of sleep costs US firms $63bn in lost productivity, 6% of employers worldwide now have on-site nap rooms. MetroNaps has become one of the first start-ups to sell its $13m “EnergyPods” to a small number of high-profile companies including Uber and Google.

The cofounder of WeWork, a global chain of coworking spaces, hasn't counted out nap rooms just yet.

Miguel McKelvey took the stage at the Bloomberg Businessweek Design 2016 conference in San Francisco on April 11 to talk about the modern workplace and the company’s newest venture, WeLive, a residential tower in New York City.

The moderator asked McKelvey how the company integrates WeWork culture and the culture of the city it inhabits to create an ideal office space. In China, for example, McKelvey learned that many people take naps at their desks by just plopping their heads down.

McKelvey and the designers recommended nap rooms, which are increasingly popping up in Silicon Valley, in the newly opened WeWork location in Shanghai.

WeWork cofounders Miguel McKelvey and Adam Neumann. WeWork

Ultimately, the WeWork Shanghai community declined a nap room because the idea of leaving your desk to take a nap seemed so foreign.

"The reality is, no one will probably ever go in the nap room, because our culture has already been established in such a strong way," McKelvey says.

A Googler takes a rest in a company nap pod. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelogon/2344404854/"> via joelogon on Flickr </a>

Should McKelvey find a city more accepting of the nap room, WeWork offices wouldn't be alone in offering this unusual amenity.

Nap-pod manufacturer Metro Naps has provided them to tech giants Google, Cisco, and Zappos over the years. The Huffington Post famously created nap rooms after editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington collapsed from exhaustion at her desk in 2007. Huffington predicts nap rooms will one day be "as common as conference rooms."

Our friends at Business Insider have debated the pros and cons of installing a nap room in its New York headquarters for more than a year. While the health benefits of napping have been well documented, the company eventually passed on account of nap rooms being "too confusing and potentially gross."