Feeling sluggish today? You are not alone. It’s Monday, and a study of 800,000 order transactions by Lehigh University researchers looking at supply chains found that “Mondays have poorer performance than other days of the week,” even after controlling for other factors.
As Fast Company reports, Monday orders take 10% longer to be processed, longer to be fulfilled, and result in more “short shipments”—when an item is listed as shipped, but not in the package or received. The study focused on a year of orders from the General Services Administration, the agency that provides supplies for the federal government.
The researchers suggest that managers combat the “Monday Effect” by increasing Monday staffing, holding meetings on other days, offering “additional pay or mood lifters such as free coffee or motivational tasks,” by automating tasks where possible and double checking Monday work.
Outside of errors in supply chain transactions, previous studies have shown that Mondays negatively impact productivity, psychological states, and finances. Read the full story.
