The Only Thing Worse Than Mondays? Monday Meetings

Every Monday started with a 9:30 AM meeting. Office employees gathered in a conference room; remote workers logged on from their laptops. The agenda was always the same: updates on ongoing projects, debriefings from the past week, and priorities for the upcoming one. And for everyone but the manager, it was the worst part of their week.

For employees, the only thing worse than Mondays, it seems, are Monday meetings. According to a recent Korn Ferry spot poll, a Monday meeting isn’t the team-building tone-setter that most managers think it is. Nearly half of respondents to the poll, 47% to be exact, think Monday is too early in the week for meetings. That’s three times the percentage of people who said Monday meetings energized them for the week ahead. Roger Philby, a Korn Ferry senior client partner and global lead for its People Strategy and Performance business, says the results underscore yet another disconnect between managers and employees. “Managers are under pressure to show results and want to kick-start the week,” he says. Employees, the majority of whom are becoming more disengaged, would rather “ease themselves into work after the weekend,” he adds.

While workers’ aversion to meetings is well-known, scheduling important ones on Mondays has become another wedge issue in the return-to-office battle. Most employees want to work from home on Mondays and Fridays, and come to the office in the middle of the week. Indeed, occupancy figures show that only about half of workers show up on Monday, with much higher results midweek. “They would rather have meetings when they are in the office,” says David Farris, sector lead for the Professional Services practice at Korn Ferry. He says that employees see mandatory meetings at the start or end of the week as an attempt to restrict their flexibility and work-life balance. To be sure, other polls and surveys have found employees dislike Friday meetings only slightly less than they do Monday ones.

As the so-called workplace pendulum has swung back to employers, however, more firms are pushing to make Mondays an anchor day in the office, says Philby, and scheduling more meetings on that day can help that cause. Think of it as a counterbalance to everyone logging off early on Fridays. Moreover, firm leaders say there are legitimate reasons for managers wanting to meet on Mondays: At the start of the week, there are fewer distractions and a lower chance of cancellation. What’s more, they say, Monday meetings help get employees into work mode after the weekend, and build more flexibility into coming days, among other things.

That said, Farris says that scheduling important meetings when people are already in the office—and when attention and engagement are at their highest—could make them more productive. If Monday meetings are unavoidable, he advises keeping them to a tight 30 minutes with a clear agenda and inviting only those who truly need to be there. Of course, no matter what leaders do, some people will always consider meetings a waste of time. Indeed, one-third of respondents in our poll were ambivalent about Monday meetings, calling them “just another meeting.” “Employees aren’t anti-meeting,” says Philby. “The problem is pointless meetings.”

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