“Quiet quitting,” “quiet firing”—just when we thought we’d heard enough new terms for employees and employers shirking some of their basic responsibilities, a new trend has gained prominence.
Employees Cutting Back on Commitment
“Bare Minimum Mondays” is a new social-media-inspired trend popularized by Marisa Jo Mayes. “The premise, according to TikTok creator, startup founder and convert Marisa Jo Mayes, is this,” writes Holly Thomas in an article for CNN. “Many of us spend Sundays making ‘insanely long to-do lists,’ putting ourselves under ‘paralyzing’ pressure to get our lives together. As a result, we hit Mondays primed for stress and unable to focus or engage properly with work. This sense of chaotic unease ripples across the week, costing us more in terms of productivity and vitality than any amount of effort can compensate for.”
The solution, according to Mayes, is to just take it easy on Monday and ease into the work week. “Bare minimum Monday devotees instead make the conscious decision to coast on the first day of the working week, thus conserving their energy,” Thomas writes. “’It was like some magic spell came over me,’ Mayes explains. ‘I felt better. I wasn’t overwhelmed, and I actually got more done than I expected.’”
Managing Employee Commitment
Many employers and people managers are likely pulling their hair out at the idea of employees consciously deciding to phone it in 20 percent of each week. If it’s true that coasting on Monday can actually make workers more productive over the course of the day or the week, great. But that’s not necessarily true for all companies or all workers, and employers should be careful to not simply embrace a push to accept significantly less effort on the part of employees at the start of each week.
Instead, employers and people managers should consider the extent to which their employees truly are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out, whether that’s specific to Mondays or just in general.
Policy Changes May Help
To the extent this challenge is real, officially sanctioned company policy changes might make sense. Maybe a policy against meetings on Monday or at least on Monday mornings, for example. Other employers might feel Mayes and her acolytes are spot on and decide to make Bare Minimum Monday an official company policy.
The important thing for employers is to make sure they’re aware of any potential grassroots movement towards a Bare Minimum Monday and address that sentiment as appropriate for their own organization.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.
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