It’s common to feel an overwhelming sense of anxiety, stress or sadness on the first day of the workweek. This can sometimes demotivate you, and your colleagues, despite the bright Monday morning. Worse, it can cause tension and fatigue. Monday Morning blues are fairly common and have been known to decrease work output and efficiency across the corporate sector.

What exactly are Monday morning blues?
Researchers like to think of them as sets of negative pessimistic emotions that many suffer from at the beginning of a workweek, causing discomfort and unhappiness at the office. According to Alexander Kjerulf, a well-known writer and speaker, Monday blues contain “elements of depression, tiredness, hopelessness and a sense that work is unpleasant but unavoidable.”

Monday blues are region agnostic and have almost become a cultural phenomenon now. But these signs of tiredness and anxiety are not something to be trifled with. They can be much more than just passing tiredness. Sometimes, these can be serious indications that something isn’t quite right at your workplace and hint prolonged mental impact due to your daily job. Happiness is the key to this type of situation. Only when you enjoy your work to its full potential, you will feel good and energized about it, at any point of time in the week. 

As an employer, there are a number of steps that can be taken to address the issue, and  help your workforce beat their Monday blues:

#1 Identify Core Issues

Are there workplace culture issues your org is facing? Have they been working long hours for too long? Perhaps it’s due to some policies? The bottom line is, your workforce isn’t looking forward to a day at work, and this can be indicative of some deeper issues that must be addressed before any other remedy is tried. 

#2 Unplug for the weekend

Sure, successful organizations like Tesla and SpaceX are known for their long, grueling work hours, and a consistent work-life imbalance across their workforce. But these are more the exception than the norm. Unless you’re a brand that wants to specifically attract a workforce with a preference for that working style, you’d do well by encouraging teams to disconnect over the weekend and recharge their batteries!

#3 Foster Positive Culture

Ensuring positive attitudes, and an environment that makes room for them is critical for an organization’s long term success. Not only does it address many minor issues, but it also certainly contributes to tackling Monday blues.

#4 Review Benefits Programs

Another long term, yet impactful solution – ensuring that your benefits programs, such as financial wellness initiatives, are running smoothly and achieving long term goals and objectives, is key to ensuring employee happiness. A workforce less stressed about health, finances, and more is a workforce that turns up on Monday raring to go!

#5 Personalise Attention

On an individual level, HR professionals may want to consider prioritizing individual interactions at the workplace. In addition to the potential for self-satisfaction here, such initiatives can result in valuable insights into employee morale, their issues, and the challenges that the HR function faces, from the most authentic of sources – the workforce, and not text or numbers in a survey. 

Happy Mondays are certainly possible, in a far higher proportion than we’d think. As long as Monday blues are addressed as a challenge that can be tackled successfully with the right strategy, the HR function doesn’t have much to worry about. 

 

Source:  www.earlysalary.com