Is Blue Monday just an opportunity to wallow in negativity, a self-imposed day of woe, or should it be a springboard for positive action? And do we need to grade Blue Mondays for degrees of miserableness?
Last year, Noelle Murphy, senior HR insights editor at XpertHR, said 16 January 2023 was “the bluest of all Blue Mondays”. She said: “The onset of the cost-of-living crisis with high inflation and wage growth that … falls well short of inflation rates, was a defining factor of 2022 and with the UK set for a prolonged and deep recession, 2023 is set to be equally bleak. This January will be … the bluest of all Blue Mondays.”
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On 15 January 2024 things are not exactly looking a lot better. But isn’t this the problem with the concept of Blue Monday – it doesn’t really work unless each one is worse than the last. You can’t really have a Blue Monday if it’s rosier than the previous year’s – it won’t seem blue enough.
Freezing commute
And anyway, it’ll soon be Valentine’s Day. And then there’ll be May bank holidays, Wimbledon, summer holidays and on we go …
In any case, the post-Christmas period has always been a difficult one for employees for reasons that barely need mentioning. But surely, hybrid working helps overcome these. If at home at least we don’t have to hurl ourselves into the darkness and rock up at work showing renewed enthusiasm and commitment to our employer, having been frozen or soaked on a railway station platform.
However, more and more employers want workers back in offices. Jayne Harrison, head of employment law at Richard Nelson, is not fond of travelling to work in the sort of freezing conditions we’re currently experiencing. She says: “Employers have a duty of care to look after the health, safety, and welfare of all of their employees.
“For those who suffer from conditions which can be exacerbated in the cold weather such as Raynaud’s disease or arthritis, we’d encourage you to discuss working arrangements with your employer. For example, if you have a job where you can work remotely, it could be agreed for you to work from the warmth and comfort of your home when the weather conditions deteriorate.”
Positivity
But with Blue Monday this year coinciding with a cold snap adding yet more doom and gloom, it’s worth reminding ourselves that the day’s “inventor” claims it should be a day of positivity. And if we at Personnel Today are going to receive the same emails about Blue Monday year after year, we feel it’s OK to repeat what we wrote last year. Cliff Arnall, a tutor in Cardiff, has said the day was never supposed to be a downer but that he came up with the concept in 2005 as a call for positivity – a day on which people make bold plans for their futures. The concept was taken up and popularised by a company called Sky Travel to promote holidays.
Arnall sought to work out the date on which this dark day fell by coming up with an equation based on weather likelihood, level of debt, time since Christmas, low motivational levels, the feeling that one needed to take action, sleep levels, stress, and time since the failure of New Year’s resolutions. Arnall has also calculated the happiest days of the year in mid- to late-June, but we don’t hear about that.
Balderdash
But others maintain this is all balderdash. Neuroscientist Dean Burnett has described the work as “farcical”, with “nonsensical measurements”, and science writer Ben Goldacre says the calculations “fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms”.
However, Christine Husbands, commercial director of nurse-led health and wellbeing firm RedArc, thinks the day is significant. She says: “A lot gets written about whether Blue Monday is just a self-fulfilling prophecy, but our data shows that the January Blues is not just a fallacy. Many issues can come to the fore in the darker, winter months, which, for some, can be too much to cope with.”
She cites figures suggesting that RedArc is referred 42% more mental health cases in January than at other times of the year. Anxiety, stress and panic disorders were the conditions needing the most support, followed by general mental health issues, and then depression and mood disorders.
Perhaps this means seasonal affective disorder, without the veneer of Christmas to hide it, hits hardest in January. Just not necessarily on the third Monday of the month. Either way, it could be time to retire Blue Monday.
Anyway, have a cheery and celebratory weekend – and don’t forget to be thoroughly fed up on Monday.
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