Bare Minimum Mondays

What Is a Bare Minimum Monday?

Bare Minimum Monday is when employees choose to do the least amount of work required on Mondays to ease into the workweek.

The basic premise is that by having the freedom to remain low-key on the first day of the week, employees will be able to reduce feelings of work-related anxiety on the weekend (goodbye Sunday Scaries!) and save energy to tackle the rest of the week with a little more enthusiasm.

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What’s Driving the Bare Minimum Monday Trend?

Like most trends, Bare Minimum Mondays has several origins. It’s emerged as a way to help employees cope with declining wellbeing and reject the idea that they must always be “on.” Here are a few common workplace issues many employees feel have pushed them toward needing downtime at the beginning of the workweek.

The “Sunday Scaries”

As an HR professional, you may feel overwhelmed just thinking about all you need to get done during the workweek.

But the Sunday Scaries can affect employees in any department, organization, or industry. In fact, nearly 75% of working Americans report feeling dread or anxiety ahead of the workweek. Bare Minimum Monday helps fight the Sunday Scaries by setting the tone for a sustainable workweek, not another five-day all-out grind.

Employee Disengagement

Recent reports reveal just one-third of employees are regularly engaged in their work. About 16% of employees are actively disengaged, meaning they deliberately refuse to do more than the minimum necessary to keep their role.

Many employees cite an overall dissatisfaction with their work, a lack of understanding about what’s expected of them, and a lack of materials and equipment needed to do their work correctly as the top three reasons for their disengagement.

The rise of the Bare Minimum Monday trend shows employers that employee disengagement may be more serious than they think and warrants real action from HR professionals.

Work-Life Balance

Surveys show that 80% of Gen Z graduates entering the workforce are at least somewhat worried about facing professional burnout.

About 65% of new Gen Z employees say it’s very important for employers to offer guidance and support for achieving work-life balance, and 66% place the same level of value on having mental health days.

Bare Minimum Mondays are, at least in part, a response to the constant push for productivity and performance. It’s a way to cut down on stress at work and achieve the work-life balance today’s employees want.

Examples of a Bare Minimum Monday

A Bare Minimum Monday schedule looks different for every employee, but here are a few common features:

Because the idea is to avoid stressing about anything that can be put off until Tuesday, any task or to-do-list format that helps an employee achieve this goal can qualify as an example of a Bare Minimum Monday.

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How the Bare Minimum Monday Trend Impacts Companies

Bare Minimum Mondays can impact companies in several ways, both positively and negatively. If your employees are using Bare Minimum Mondays, here are some company-wide effects you might expect to see.

Promoting Better Focus

One positive outcome of Bare Minimum Mondays is they allow employees time to focus on tasks without being pulled in multiple directions.

Attending meetings, answering phone calls, and replying to messages can sometimes be distracting, causing employees to miss important deadlines. If employees can avoid these activities for one day (or part of one day) it can improve their focus and time management for other critical tasks.

Improving Work-Life Balance

Today’s employees clearly want work-life balance. As an HR professional, it’s important to understand how this desire impacts your organization. Work-life balance can reduce turnover, as 62% of employees say it’s important when considering whether to take another job.

Additionally, it can help reduce employee stress at work, which can improve morale, decrease burnout, and help make employees happier.

Making Productivity Challenging

Although Bare Minimum Mondays allow employees to focus more by alleviating stress in the short term, they have the potential to negatively impact overall productivity if not managed well. If you’re going to promote Bare Minimum Mondays—or engage in them yourself—it’s important to offset any productivity issues from the get-go.

Before committing to this work philosophy, consider how employees might need to adapt it to fit their role. Not everyone can decline all Monday-morning meetings. But there might be time for a screen break somewhere else in the day.

Creating a Work Pile-Up

Taking it slow on Monday morning can create space for a more productive week ahead, but failing to pick up the pace could snowball into a weeklong slowdown. The work some employees avoid on Bare Minimum Mondays doesn’t just disappear. It’ll still be there waiting for them on Tuesday morning, and by then, they’ll have less time to tackle those tasks.

Sometimes, one employee declining certain tasks on Monday means others won’t get their questions answered or get what they need to complete their work.

Failing to properly manage it could turn a stress-reliever into a source of anxiety itself and‌ cause tension on teams with others who like to get the ball rolling on Monday morning.

Best Practices for Making Mondays Work for Employees and the Company as a Whole

Whether your employees are getting down to business at the top of the week or are joining others in taking it slow, Bare Minimum Mondays offer an opportunity to rethink how you approach productivity and performance.

Make sure to keep these best practices in mind if you’re considering how you can make Mondays work for your current and future workforce:

Don’t forget to keep an eye on employee morale and work to understand what support they need to achieve an optimal balance of productivity and wellbeing.

Remember, Bare Minimum Mondays evolved in response to employees feeling overwhelmed by their work. Ensuring your employees feel cared for and can help prevent burnout.

Whether it’s launching a recognition program, offering employee resource groups, providing additional training, or adding in a few fun team-building activities, the real secret to making Mondays—and every day—work well for your organization is focusing on doing what’s necessary to make sure everyone thrives.​​

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