Transcript:
Alyssa Place: (
Welcome to Perk Up!, a podcast about workplace culture and benefits, brought to you from the team at Employee Benefit News. I'm Alyssa Place, executive editor at EBN. And over the next few weeks, my colleagues and I will share the stories of businesses who have implemented forward-thinking, covetable workplace policies and benefits, keeping their employees happy and their company's bottom line thriving. First up, EBN editor-in-chief Stephanie Schomer takes a look at the sleep-focused culture at Bearaby.
Stephanie Schomer: (
Hey everyone. And welcome to today's episode of Perk Up! I'm Stephanie Schomer, editor-in-chief of Employee Benefit News. And I'm here to talk to you about sleep — but specifically, sleep at work.
Stephanie Schomer: (
You know we've all been there. You're having a productive workday, moving through your to-do list, and then three o'clock rolls around — and suddenly your eyes are heavy, you can't focus, and all you want to do is curl up on the couch and sneak in a quick nap. Now, look, I assume that at least some of the people listening have given in and taken that coveted nap, but it's safe to say that largely, sleeping in the middle of the workday is frowned upon. But what if it just...wasn't?
Kathrin Hamm used to think about this a lot. Today, Hamm's the founder of Bearaby, a company that makes weighted blankets to help people sleep better. (If you don't have one, you've definitely seen them all over Instagram.) But back when Hamm was working as an economist at the World Bank, she had a nonstop travel schedule, one that bounced her between Washington and the Middle East and South Asia. And that schedule turned her from a historic light sleeper into someone who was really suffering from chronic insomnia. So to cope, she decided to matters into her own hands.
Kathrin Hamm: (
I had like these little hacks and tricks. For example, I used to always live very close to my employer. Like, literally two streets across. And I always would made like an excuse, you know, when people would break for lunch. I would say, oh, I'm just going around the corner to pick up a salad. But in reality, I would go quickly to my home, to my apartment, and take a quick nap, a 20-minute nap. It's something I grew up with coming from Germany. And it made such a difference to me. But in the usual workplace, there's stigma around that idea, that people are lazy who nap, or that it's something for babies.
Stephanie Schomer: (
That's Hamm, whose former bosses never got wise to her secret naps, but she knew they were making her a more productive, more effective worker. Still, she struggled to find a sustainable sleep schedule and started poring over research in medical journals, trying to solve her own problem with achieving valuable rest. One surprising find? Hamm learned about how weighted blankets, which had frequently been used to bring comfort to children with sensory disorders and autism, can also help boost sleep. So she ordered one from a medical specialty store and it worked wonders, but it was far from perfect.
Kathrin Hamm: (
So the one I got, it didn't look great. It was filled with plastic beads and it's basically two layers that make the fabric heavy. It wasn't designed in a way that I could sleep under it for eight hours. It was just incredibly hot. And I was just hoping there must be something out there. Someone must have come up with an idea to just create something with temperature control, make it breathable, make it comfortable. So that it's, something that I can use in my usual bedtime routine. I did more research and there was really nothing out there.
Stephanie Schomer: (
So in 2018, she took an entrepreneurial leap and launched Bearaby, determined to make weighted blankets that were cozy, beautiful and breathable. The company's innovative open-weave knit design quickly gained traction among consumers. And in 2020, as the entire world struggled with the stress and anxiety of the pandemic, the young startup's revenue spiked to over $21 million. Today, Bearaby has 24 full-time employees stretched across the globe. Operations are headquartered in Brooklyn with another office in Dubai, and additional team members work remotely from Los Angeles to Sri Lanka. But no matter are the time zone ham has created one steadfast rule for her workers: your schedule can and should revolve around your sleep needs. To help her team do that, she structured Bearaby's workdays in an unusual way.
Kathrin Hamm: (
We all narrow down to a concept we call it flexi hours. So we have a set of working hours where we all kind of are available. So this is a time between 10:30 and 2:30. And in that time we are trying to get all our meetings done.
Stephanie Schomer: (
And outside of those four flexi hours, well, work gets done whenever it suits the employee.
Kathrin Hamm: (
When I was still working as an employee, what are some of the things that would be important for me now? One thing is obviously like trust and the flexibility of time. So I can adjust to my own rhythm. We have designers in the company; they're most creative at night. Why would I force them to come in to the office at 9 a.m.? Or, you know, there's the mother of two children who wants to pick her kids up around three or four. Why can't she start early and have the quality time in the afternoon with her kids?
Stephanie Schomer: (
The whole system, Hamm explains, aims to empower workers, to lean into their natural circadian rhythms, as well as to find the time when they're most productive. Aside from the flexi hours, employees are also encouraged to nap throughout the day as needed, whether that means curling up in one of the many cozy spots at the Bearaby offices or taking a quick midday break to catch a cat nap at home. Putting sleep at the forefront of company culture, she says, works for the early birds, it works for the night owls, and it's good for employee retention.
Take Agne Fetter. She's a senior manager of culture and customer happiness at Bearaby. Like Hamm, Fetter is based in Dubai, and has worked at the company for just under two years. Previously, she'd spent some time in the corporate world, and she's found the culture at Bearaby, and the flexibility provided by a sleep-obsessed boss, to be refreshing, to say the least. Here's why.
Agne Fetter: (
Flexi hours might sound similar to what a lot of other companies are doing. But I think the way we ended up having it, in terms of core hours, is really a concept that works for everyone. And I'm very happy that we have that going. So it not only gives you the flexibility of, you know, planning your own day around how you would like it to be done, but shows you how much you're valued by both the company and all the people around you. And just, I think that's probably the best thing that a company could do for you, just make you the owner of your own time. I love going to the gym in the morning. So that also means that I don't have to wake up for a 7 a.m. class, which is amazing. Then it allows you to leave the office or just do your thing in the late afternoon. So in my case, I think my cat is the happiest about that. Because I usually go home around three or four and have some play time with him before starting the late calls.
Stephanie Schomer: (
But those late calls that Fetter makes space for bring up an interesting question: with a global workforce, each operating on flexi hours within their own time zone, how can workers set boundaries so that they're not expected to be reachable, well, any time of day? That's something Hamm thought a lot about, and we'll get into her approach and solution right after this short break.
Welcome back to Perk Up!, where we're chatting about how, outside of a four-hour coworking window, the startup Bearaby allows its team members to work whenever they want, with a goal of prioritizing their own rest and sleep. But what does that mean when colleagues are stretched across time zones? Does it create an expectation that employees must, in fact, always be reachable? Not necessarily, says Bearaby CEO Kathrin Hamm.
Kathrin Hamm: (
It's a good question. And I mean, it's also something I thought about a lot. I think with COVID, we felt it even more that these kind of naturally-given barriers between work and personal life are getting more blurry. So for us, we should get as a goal that we also have an end-time of like flexi hours. So where it's like, after five or after six, there's no more work to be done. And I think what we, what we kind of as a company where I wanna get to is that we have that level of support system that people can choose. Sometimes there are things that just happen outside of like the co-working hours, but then it's really important that everyone is aware. It's easy to say, well, let's make an exception today, or let's make a quick exception tomorrow. There needs to be an extra approval that goes through me on why we would work outside of these co-working hours. And I think having these really clear layers and structures around it makes it very transparent and, and people kind of buy into it and get it very quickly.
Stephanie Schomer: (
So you're really working to protect this system.
Kathrin Hamm: (
Yeah. Because it's easy to slip. It's easy to say, well it's just today. But that's when habits creep in, and I think habits form through consistency over time. It's the same with the company culture. And also I feel in terms of being authentic — if we say we have co-working hours but then we meet outside that time, it's not consistent. And the system would fall apart pretty quickly. So we are working really hard to, to protect those boundaries.
Stephanie Schomer: (
So far, her efforts seem to be working. Guillermo Cengotitabengoa is a Bearaby general manager for the Americas, based in New York. That means that the standard 10:30 to 2:30 flexi hours won't always make sense while he's connecting with Bearaby teammates on the other side of the world. But Cengotitabengoa, who's a self-described morning person, makes sure that he's up early for calls with Dubai, available for folks in L.A., and still has time to take care of himself — which often includes following Hamm's lead and taking a nap during the workday.
Guillermo Cengotitabengoa: (
I'm originally from Northern Spain, I believe in the siesta. So in terms of napping, that's something that I take advantage of when possible. And it makes sense. Maybe, you know, I'm a little tired, I'll take a nap in the middle of the day, 20 minutes here and there. It's great.
Stephanie Schomer: (
Cengotitabengoa joined the company when Bearaby was just a tiny team of four, and as the organization has scaled, he says, they've relied on transparency and communication to support and protect employees, flexibility — and nap ability.
Guillermo Cengotitabengoa: (
Everybody in the company knows what their job is. So if we talk — Hey, yesterday, we talked about this thing, where are we with that? Those things are being done. Everybody knows what they need to accomplish. If it doesn't get done, it means, oh, I guess we didn't get it done. So what are you gonna get it done? Hours are, I think, a thing of the past. It's more like, what are your roles? What are your responsibilities? What are the projects you need to get done? What are the milestones you need to hit today or tomorrow or the next week? And everybody just goes with them. It doesn't mean we don't have delays like any company — things happen and priorities get shuffled. And something that was not important three days ago now becomes important. So they just move around and something gets delayed. But if you're conscious about that, it's, you know, it's business, that's how you do it, right?
Stephanie Schomer: (
That workflow requires cultural buy-in from employees from day one. From the interview process to onboarding, Hamm and her team make sure that the new team members understand and appreciate the culture they're walking into and help them find their own best path forward.
Kathrin Hamm: (
One of our intakes when we onboard someone is that we have a whole module in training around sleep and a circadian rhythm. And I think it's quite eye-opening to see: are you actually like a morning person? Or are you a night person? We have a journaling exercise that we do over two weeks of onboarding where people kind of just reflect, oh, this is actually like when I was my best. And it's simple questions, like when did you actually do the best work? When did you play as a kid? Like what were the timings and how did it change when you grew up, when you started like entering the workforce? I think a lot of these reflections get lost as we get into like these 9-to-5 systems. And you actually forget to think about like, you know, what is my natural, a preference? What's my style if there weren't boundaries imposed by a 9-to-5 working culture?
Stephanie Schomer: (
For Fetter, the results of that test were immediately reflected in her experience at Bearaby when she first joined the company.
Agne Fetter: (
When I came into the new office, we had the seat assigned, and normally this is the place that I dread the most because I used to get seats assigned that I really hated in my previous workspaces. And when I came in, Kathrin just mentioned, oh, you know, I remember that you're an introvert. So they assigned me a corner spot. And that was probably the nicest thing that I could imagine happening in that day.
Stephanie Schomer: (
And while seating assignments don't really have anything to do with circadian rhythms or the ability to take naps during the workday, it's reflective of a culture that, first and foremost, recognizes that different employees have different needs, Fetter says.
Agne Fetter: (
We have been able to achieve a lot in such a short time. And I think the fact that no one's actually measuring whether you were able to sit in front of the computer for nine hours is part of that, because you can just really bring your best. And you know, if it's not your day, it's just not your day. And you do your best the following day,
Stephanie Schomer: (
Imagining this kind of company culture for a team of 24, it doesn't feel so out of reach or unimaginable. But as Bearaby continues to grow, what does its future look like? Protecting this system for a team of this size is one thing. Protecting it if and when the company has hundreds of employees will be a totally different beast. And that's something that both Hamm and Cengotitabengoa acknowledged when we spoke.
Guillermo Cengotitabengoa: (
You're never gonna have 200 people who fit the culture a hundred percent, that is kind of difficult. You know, we will be more structured, we, which is what usually happens. And you need to be more structural and organized in how you do work. And communication lines need to be continue to be very strong. That small-group feeling may not be the same with a hundred people, but you can still put things in place. It's a tricky thing and you need to continue to be very vigilant if you wanna keep the special thing we have.
Stephanie Schomer: Do you think the naps will stick around?
Guillermo Cengotitabengoa: I think the naps will stick around. You can always find 20 minutes here and there, right?
Stephanie Schomer: (
I'll leave you with that food for thought, and hope that when you're done listening, you can carve out 20 minutes of your own. I'm Stephanie Schomer with Employee Benefit News. Thanks for listening.
Alyssa Place: (