Are you having one of ‘those days’ at work? It’s more common than you think

We all have them: one of ‘those days’ at work where you haven’t done anything by lunch time apart from staring at your emails, having a snack or two and wandered aimlessly around the internet.

According to three researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), who analysed 11 245 workday surveys over two to nine months of 221 office workers, this is what is called a disengaged day.

They found that employees have ideal, typical, disengaged, crisis and toxic days and that the same types of days tend to appear consecutively, which means that tomorrow will probably then also be a disengaged day.

The problem comes in when you multiply your disengaged day across tens of millions of employees in millions of offices and find this leads to low productivity, poor work quality, contagious low morale and trouble keeping good employees. And disengaged employees also do not innovate.

Prof. Mayoor Mohan, associate professor of marketing at VCU’s school of business, who was one of the co-authors, says companies do not have a good handle on how to drive creativity among individuals from an organisational point, because the people management aspect of it has been left untouched.

The researchers found empirical evidence for five distinct daily workplace experiences and most surprising was that the factors that determine good or bad days were mostly beyond workers’ control.

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Five types of working days

• Typical days make up 34% of work days with smooth sailing for tasks requiring little thought. While you are not fired up about work, you have just enough motivation to be mildly engaged. It could be a catch-up day, with creativity neither high nor low. People often let themselves fall into typical days which can be an obstacle for creativity and more ideal days.
• Ideal days make up 29% of work days where you find you are productive, fuelled by a positive mix of autonomy, challenging work, resources and support from your manager and organisation. Healthy pressures, such as deadlines, keep you hopping and clashes or red tape do not slow you down.
• Crisis days make up 19% of work days where you find yourself putting out fires. Good factors are there, such as engaging tasks, but there are problems, such as a project imploding, a contentious meeting or too little critical resources such as time, staff or equipment. You think you are being creative, but you are not.
• Disengaged days make up 10% of working days where the positive and negative aspects of the environment are missing, leaving you without pressures and motivators. You lack energy on these days.
• Toxic days make up 8% of work days where you face obstacles, challenges or conflict mixed with a lack of positive factors such as freedom, engaging work and encouragement. Maybe ugly office politics get in the way or your project is postponed or emotional conflict trips you up.

What makes a bad day?

Prof. Christopher Reina, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship, told Bloomberg he used his own past corporate experiences when he had one of ‘those days’ when colleagues did not cooperate.

“It kind of throws you off your game and it is really demotivating. Changing demands with time pressures can really reduce your ability to complete a task in time.”

He began with a simple research question: What makes your work days go well or not well? After all, you were the same person yesterday and perfectly productive.

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Leaders play a really important role in engineering the work environment and how people perceive it day to day, lead author, Prof. Alexander McKay, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, says.

The researchers agree that the goal should not be to have only good days, because aside from it not being possible, crisis days are important. “You need to debate and discuss and butt heads to move ideas forward. What matters is how you respond: do you crash and have a string of toxic days? Or are you motivated for the next project? Managers play a key role by providing support, resources, encouragement and engaging work,” McKay says.

According to Mohan, you cannot just barge in and shake things up because you read a study about how more freedom and support leads to better days. “The goal is to adjust culture to boost positive experiences and alleviate negative ones in the hope of adding ideal days and reducing toxic ones, which requires keen awareness of employees’ day-to-day experiences.”

Reina says awareness is half the game for employees, because it allows them to see where their day is going and leans toward the better days. “People who are mindful do not experience as much of a declining trajectory, because they can step back and look at how the day unfolded without judgment or negative emotion.”

“There’s nothing to suggest that you’re going to have week of toxic days—there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. Or, if you are riding a wave, at some point that wave is going to come crashing down,” Mohan says.

Additional information: Bloomberg