How leaders can guide first 30 days back at work

JANUARY has a strange way of holding two truths at once.

- ANJA VAN BEEK

The return to work in January doesn’t greet everyone with renewed clarity and refreshed energy levels.

(Freepik)

It’s a month filled with fresh notebooks, intentional goals, renewed clarity and hopeful beginnings. Yet for many professionals, it also arrives with a knot of apprehension in the stomach and lingering exhaustion we've carried with us into the new year.

Tired return

There’s a common expectation that a holiday should “reset us” and that two weeks of rest will somehow undo a year’s worth of pressure, long hours and emotional labour. However, human functioning and resilience don’t follow the calendar.

The body keeps score and the adjustment back to work often reveals how stretched we were heading into the break. For many South Africans, the December holiday is not only a period of rest but also a significant emotional and relational season full of family commitments, travel, financial pressure and disrupted routines that all shape how we return.

According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, global stress levels remain near record highs, with 44% of employees reporting that they experienced significant stress the previous day. This means many people did not enter their holidays in a state of calm; they entered already exhausted. Rest is not instant. Even when our out-of-office reply is on, our bodies often need more time than we think to recover from the year behind us.