Summer Fridays are increasingly rare as hybrid schedules gain steam

Summer Fridays may be considered the most desirable perk of the season, but fewer employers are on board with the shortened workweek.

Companies have steadily phased out summer Fridays — a policy that allows workers to take Friday afternoon off over the summer months — as work-from-home Fridays became more common, experts say.

“Pre-pandemic, summer Fridays were thing, but hybrid overall has taken over,” said Bill Driscoll, technology workplace trends expert at staffing and consulting firm Robert Half.

As more commuters settle into flexible working arrangements, fewer workers are making Friday trips at all compared to mid-week traffic patterns, according to the 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard released in January by INRIX Inc., a traffic-data analysis firm.

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Among employees, however, summer Fridays are the most valued summer benefit, followed by summer hours and flextime, according to a new survey by job site Monster, which polled more than 400 U.S. workers in June. 

“Summer Fridays are highly valued among workers because, for many, they represent more than just a few extra hours off,” said Scott Blumsack, Monster’s chief strategy and marketing officer. This perk “can go a long way in showing employees they’re valued, which can help prevent burnout, boost morale, and improve retention during a season when disengagement can run high.”

Still, 84% of workers are not offered any summer-specific benefits, even though 55% also said those benefits improve productivity, Monster found.

Instead, hybrid — and to a lesser extent fully remote — job postings have increased in the last year as employers compete for talented job seekers who prioritize flexibility, according to research by Robert Half.

“Hybrid is a highly desirable situation right now and one that all levels of employees are looking for,” said Robert Half’s Driscoll.

More than five years after the pandemic, 72% of organizations also have return-to-office mandates, according to a separate hybrid work study by Cisco.

But, even with the mandates, employees are less likely to work in the office on Fridays, and much more likely to commute Monday to Thursday, Cisco found.

As employee burnout and disengagement grows amid the wave of in-office mandates, work-life balance and flexible hours have become increasingly important, other studies show.

Corporate wellness company Exos, which works with large organizations such as JetBlue and Adobe, says burnout has gone down significantly among employees at firms that have made Fridays more flexible. Exos also tested out “You Do You Fridays” — and found significant benefits.

The more adaptable the schedule, the more positively employees view their company’s policies, the Cisco report also found.

With hybrid arrangements now common, workers put a high value on that flexibility — and 63% of all workers would even accept a pay cut for the option to work remotely more often, according to Cisco’s global survey of more than 21,500 employers and employees working full-time.

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