Blue Monday - the role of employer support on the year’s most depressing day
Steph Hind, co-founder of Heka
Blue Monday, often dubbed the most depressing day of the year, can have a real impact on both individuals and business performance at large. However, as Heka co-founder Steph Hind argues, it also presents an opportunity for businesses to boost employee wellbeing and performance throughout the new year.
Originally created as a marketing term by a travel company hoping to increase sales post-festive season, Blue Monday, at least for us Brits, has quickly woven its way into our culture. And there are a multitude of reasons for this. But while no one person will feel the same impact across these factors, combined, they’ve become rooted in our public consciousness.
There’s the stark reality between the holiday season – a time of joy, rest, and relaxation for most – and the sudden back-to-work rush, where employees are supposed to feel fresh and motivated enough to make a quick start and hit the ground running. During this period, the dark winter days play a crucial part – plenty of biological and psychological scientific studies indicate a correlation between weather and mood.
On top of this, our culture promotes overspending during holiday seasons, in part to appease brands’ bottom lines throughout the golden sales period of Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year. For some, the expenditure throughout the holidays, regardless of whether it was only slightly elevated, can cause significant financial worries as we head into the New Year.
Finally, there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. January is recognised as a month of low mood, energy, and motivation – especially if those ambitious resolutions are already starting to waver – so people are expecting to feel down during this period.
Many business leaders may be wondering what Blue Monday has to do with them. Well, simple as it may seem, if your employees are feeling low, stressed, and unmotivated, you can bet your organisations performance will follow suit.
However, herein lies an opportunity.
The business opportunity of Blue Monday
While some businesses may not give Blue Monday a second thought – you won’t find employee wellness considerations around the 20th of January in anyone’s terms of employment – it doesn’t mean the organisation won’t benefit from tackling the issue.
Putting initiatives in place to combat the blues this January 2025 will instantly impact your business ability to find early form and increase performance. Research from Hekas 2024 Employee Benefit Gap Report detailed the business impact of outdated employee benefits versus modernised solutions. Almost all (97 percent) HR teams reported that a flexible wellbeing programme improves company culture. Equally, 93 percent of employees agreed that a proper wellbeing programme makes them healthier.
However, organisations should be aware of the differences within wellness programmes, as not all are created equal. When we speak of modernised initiatives, we’re talking about flexible, tailored benefits that are easily accessible to every employee, in a way that equally serves a new junior male member of staff or a female nearing retirement age, and everyone in between. Yet the status quo indicates that, for a lot of people, these objectives are not being met.
Further research reveals that only 52 percent of employees are told how to access the benefits their company provides. On top of this, more than a third (34 percent) of employees would choose perks, when given the option, that do not exist within the workplace wellbeing programmes offered by their employers.
So, while a business can tackle employee lows during Blue Monday and across the calendar year by creating initiatives, benefits, or support systems from scratch, this method only opens the door for tokenised care. And when it comes to assisting employees with their personal and professional health on Blue Monday, these offerings simply won’t cut it.
Modernised wellbeing - a warning
While Blue Monday should be a specific focus, it must not become a tick-box date where a business provides help for the day, week, or month but then retracts that level of assistance for the rest of the year. We must change our thinking and implement wellbeing initiatives and benefits that can alleviate struggles not only during Blue Monday, but all year round – there’s no predictability on when employees need extra consideration. In doing so, businesses can achieve a more consistent level of morale, loyalty, and engagement – week in and week out.
Wellbeing benefits packages and platforms exist that make it far easier for organisations to look after their teams; and the best platforms provide thousands of benefits, ranging from eye care to nutrition, financial advice to menopause-related health. They can also provide analytics into the type of aid their employees are using, helping to guide HR initiatives.
As Blue Monday approaches, we urge businesses to consider how they can better safeguard their employees, and understand for themselves the causal link between support, culture, and performance.