Are Monday Blues Real? Here’s What Research Says
Posted 4th October 2021 • Written by Kim Elsesser on forbes.com • • • • •
New research studied employees to see if Monday blues were a real thing.
A new study examined two competing theories about how employees perceive Mondays, and it turns out employees view the beginning of the week differently from the end. The study pitted the “Monday blues” perspective against the idea that employees are rested, recharged and better able to tackle the world on Mondays. The research findings have repercussions for how employers should manage the typical five day workweek.
According to the “Monday blues” perspective, employees are not happy about returning to work after the weekend break. Not only do they have to return to work after a two-day respite, but they’re still five days away from their next weekend break. However, as the weekend approaches, their mood picks up and by Friday afternoon, this theory posits employees are in a better place and better able to deal with whatever comes their way.
The competing “rested and recharged” perspective suggests that employees arrive to work on Monday mornings all charged up and ready to go after the weekend break. As a result, employees are more resilient and better able to handle the stress of their job at the beginning of the week. As the week progresses, workers, according to this theory, get more worn out and are less able to deal with stressors at work.
In order to test out which of these competing theories is a better match for employees’ experience, the researchers asked workers to complete daily surveys. Only those employees who worked a traditional workweek, Monday through Friday, with no weekends or evenings were included. Each day, the researchers questioned participants about the stress they encountered at work and how much they liked their job.
The researchers found that the “Monday blues” perspective captured the experience of these workers best. The employees reported liking their job less and experiencing more stress at the beginning of the week. In addition, the link between some stressors and how much they liked their job was stronger at the beginning of the week, indicating that employees may also be more sensitive to stress earlier in the week.
The researchers describe why stressors may be perceived differently on different days, “On Fridays…[employees] are better able to handle or even ignore the stressor, knowing their exposure to the stressor is about to end for the week. On Monday, on the other hand, the stressors that they encounter have the potential to linger over the following days, and employees may perceive their own ability to cope with those stressors (without having a chance to fully recover) as lower, and consequently appraise the stressors as more severe and experience less job satisfaction in response.”
Although vacations and weekends can both mean time off from work (for some), vacations may impact employees differently than weekends off. Lead author of the study, Shani Pindek, assistant professor at the University of Haifa, says that research shows that leading up to a vacation, employees generally report an increased workload. “A vacation requires planning ahead of time (planning the vacation itself, as well as managing the work ahead of taking the time off), which adds to the general stress levels before the vacation,” she says. But, after a vacation, the employees generally report greater well-being and less burnout. Unfortunately, Pindek says these effects don’t typically last long.
When it comes to helping employees manage their Monday blues, there are ways that organizations can adapt. The researchers suggest that any wellness activities held by the organization should be scheduled early in the week, when employees need them the most. Similarly, major organizational changes that might induce stress should be placed closer to the weekend.
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