Jun. 24, 2022 "Thinking of taking Fridays off this summer? So is everyone else": Today I found this article by Jo Constanz on the Financial Post:
Worried that summer Fridays will go the way of snow days? Don’t fret: They’re here to stay, and gaining in popularity.
According to data from job search platform ZipRecruiter Inc.,
listings offering summer Fridays are up 56 per cent from last year.
Remote work has dissolved many boundaries
but Friday afternoons from Memorial Day to Labor Day in the United States seem to have retained their protected status.
It’s a perk that thousands of organizations, from small startups to large corporations like Pfizer Inc. and International Business Machines Corp., offer to win talent and fight burnout.
“In a tight labour market with fierce competition for talent,
but also rising input costs,
many businesses have
raised wages as much as they feel they can afford
and are looking for non-monetary ways to appeal to candidates,”
said Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist.
Offering Fridays off in the summer months appeals to job-seekers, she said,
while “the monetary and productivity costs for many employers are minimal to none.”
Giving workers the day off can also improve morale.
According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends 2022 report,
employees are two and a half times more likely to report being happy if they approve of their companies’ flexible hours and location policies.
Neal Manowitz, president and chief operating officer of Sony Electronics Inc. North America, recently posted on LinkedIn a sample out-of-office message that doubles as a recruitment ad:
“PSA for #TeamSony. Here is how to reply to emails during our Summer Fridays. Or, you could just say ‘out of the office, went to the beach.’”
Almost four in 10 workers say their organization offers some form of flexible scheduling, according to a not-yet-released survey conducted last month of more than 3,500 employees worldwide by consulting firm Gartner Inc. Of those, half said the policy started in the last year.
Although the Monday–to-Thursday schedule is shaping up as the new normal, such flexible scheduling means that many employees can come and go as they please.
Data from the Hampton Jitney, a coach service that departs from multiple Manhattan locations and drops passengers off at various places in the Hamptons,
shows ridership on Fridays is down 15 per cent from before the pandemic,
while midweek traffic is up 19 per cent.
The summer Friday tradition is said to have originated in the 1960s as a way for Manhattan publishing-house and advertising-agency staffs to beat the weekend rush to the Hamptons.
Catching the so-called cannonball train that departs Fridays just after 4 p.m. had been the “goal of many hard-working New Yorkers,”
said James Keogh, a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman,
referring to the nonstop Long Island Railroad train that leaves from Penn Station and arrives in the Hamptons in 95 minutes.
But now, “summer Fridays happen any day of the week, any time of the year,” said Judi Desiderio, chief executive officer of Town and Country, a Hamptons real estate firm.
Ethena, a compliance training platform, decided to start summer Fridays this year to reduce pandemic-related stress and burnout.
“The lines have become really blurry between work and personal life,” said Melanie Naranjo, Ethena’s vice president of people.
“Employees are looking for employers to help them set up certain boundaries” to build work-life balance into the structure of the company, she said.
Some policies, like unlimited personal time off,
sound great in theory but put the onus on workers
— especially younger
or newly hired workers
who may feel they have less licence to use the benefit
— to figure out where to draw the line.
Employees also return from vacation with a sense of dread
to a full inbox
and a mountain of work to catch up on,
Naranjo said.
“So we really felt that it was important to pick days for everyone to take off at the same time.”
Even if a company doesn’t offer summer Fridays in so many words,
the rise of flexible scheduling means many employees can make it their own personal policy,
whether or not their boss approves.
In the words of one Twitter user: “companies that don’t grant your employees summer Fridays – the employees are giving it to themselves hope u know.”
Those with hybrid schedules are most likely to wrap up the week at home.
“Fridays are the least popular day in the workplace,” said Jonathan Weindel, head of data analytics at workplace platform Envoy.
In New York City in May,
Fridays saw only eight per cent of the work week’s office foot traffic,
down from about 12 per cent the same time last year, according to Envoy.
Tuesdays were the most popular workdays, with 24 per cent of the week’s foot traffic.
Many people are taking advantage of relaxed schedules to depart for trips on Fridays.
According to Flightradar24, a global flight tracking service, there were nearly 110,000 commercial flights last Friday, the most since March 2020.
As statistician and writer Nate Silver put it on Twitter that day:
“Never fight a land war in Asia
or try to get to Newark Airport from Manhattan in the late afternoon of a summer Friday.”
https://financialpost.com/fp-work/taking-fridays-off-summer-join-clubThis all works well when the jobs are plentiful , but when hard times hit the stick carrier becomes the caned
Jul. 29, 2022 "'No turning back': Fridays in the office are over for good": Today I found this article by Abha Bhattarai on the Financial Post:
Haley LaFloure picked up a couple dozen doughnuts on the way to work.
She forgot it was Friday.
The surprise she’d planned for her colleagues turned out to be on her:
The office was empty. Everyone else at the St. Louis investment firm where she works had decided to close out the week from home,
which meant LaFloure was stuck at her desk with enough sugary fried dough to last her a month.
“I don’t even like doughnuts,” the 25-year-old said. “I sat down and was like, ‘What am I going to do with these?’ ”
As white-collar workers across the country settle into hybrid work routines, one thing is becoming clear:
Nobody wants to be in the office on Fridays.
The last day of the workweek, once synonymous with
long lunches
and early departures,
has increasingly become a day to skip the office altogether.
The trend, which was already brewing before the pandemic,
has become widely adopted, even codified, in recent months and is creating new challenges for employers.
Just 30 per cent of office workers swiped into work on Fridays in June,
the least of any weekday,
according to Kastle Systems, which provides building security services for 2,600 buildings nationwide.
That’s compared to 41 per cent on Mondays,
the day with the second-lowest turnout,
and 50 per cent on Tuesdays,
when the biggest share of workers are in the office.
“It’s becoming a bit of cultural norm:
You know nobody else is going to the office on Friday, so maybe you’ll work from home, too,”
said Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
“Even before the pandemic, people thought of Friday as a kind of blowoff day.
And now there’s a growing expectation that you can work from home to jump-start your weekend.”
So far, employers appear divided on whether to
embrace a remote end to the week
or to try to lure employees to the office.
There are
taco trucks
and wine carts,
costume contests
and karaoke sing-offs,
all aimed at getting workers to give up their couches for cubicles.
Even buttoned-up employers are learning to let loose.
Citigroup Inc. has deemed Fridays “Zoom-free,”
while accounting giant KPMG International Ltd. promises “no-camera Fridays”
and lets employees clock out for the weekend at 3 p.m. in the summers.
“We want to make sure people are getting a break so they can recharge their batteries,”
said Paul Knopp, chief executive of KPMG U.S.
“We’re giving them a lot more agency
about how they work
— and where they work.”
Some startups and tech firms have begun doing away with Fridays altogether.
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter
and online consignment shop ThredUp
are among a small but growing number of firms moving to a four-day workweek
that runs from Monday to Thursday.
Executives at Bolt, a checkout technology company in San Francisco,
began experimenting with no-work Fridays last summer
and quickly realized they’d hit a winning formula.
Employees were more productive than before,
and came back to work on Mondays with new enthusiasm.
In January, it switched to a four-day workweek for good.
“There was no hesitation: Everybody was like, ‘Sign me up,’ ” said Angela Bagley, the company’s head of employee experience.
“And it was amazing:
We kept getting the job done.
Managers were onboard,
people kept hitting their goals.
And they come back on Mondays energized and more engaged.”
But for other companies, finding the right balance has been trickier.
“Employers recognize that it’s tougher to get people to come back in, so they’re asking, ‘What can we do?’ ” said Julie Schweber, an adviser at the Society of Human Resource Management.
“The answer is basically:
If you feed them, they will come.
Food trucks,
special catered events,
ice cream socials,
that’s what’s popular right now.”
Online Optimism, a digital marketing firm with offices in New Orleans, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., has a Friday routine of free lunches and free-flowing happy hours beginning at 4 p.m. sharp. The only rule: no shots.
Although the company has dropped all requirements for in-office work,
as many as 80 per cent of its 25 employees show up on days when there’s free food,
said chief executive Flynn Zaiger.
“Honestly, the best socializing happens on Friday,” he said.
“Why not have a beer or two?
If people are going to be a little less productive one day of the week,
I’d rather it be Friday than Monday.”
Those shifting norms are rippling across the economy and reshaping business patterns for commercial real estate firms, parking garage operators and the many eateries that cater to workers during the week.
The drop-off in office work, particularly on Fridays,
has led coffee shops to reduce their hours,
delis to rethink staffing
and bars like Pat’s Tap in Minneapolis to kick off happy hour earlier than ever — starting at 2 p.m.
“Since they’re not at the office, people come in early to pluck away at their laptops while they sip a cocktail or two,” said General Manager Dave Robinson.
“By 4:30 or 5 on Fridays, we’re completely full.”
But lunchtime haunts that once saw large crowds on Fridays say they’re struggling.
The drop-off has been particularly stark at Manny’s Cafeteria & Delicatessen in Chicago.
Business on Fridays is down 30 per cent from pre-pandemic levels.
“It’s painful,” owner Dan Raskin said.
“Before the pandemic, Friday was the busiest day of the week
— people would have an easier day at work and go out with their friends for lunch —
but now it’s one of the slowest.”
That’s also the case at LAZ Parking, which operates more than 3,000 garages nationwide.
Demand on Mondays and Fridays is much lower — by about 20 per cent
— than it is midweek, said Leo Villafana, the company’s vice president for the Mid-Atlantic region.
Wednesdays are the busiest days, though even when people do come in, they tend to stay for shorter periods.
The desire to work from home on Fridays is just about universal, said Johnny Taylor, chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, an industry lobby group.
“When you ask employees when they want to work from home, everyone wants Fridays,” he said.
Taylor began toying with hybrid schedules in 2015, long before the pandemic forced businesses of all kinds to adapt.
But his early experiments with remote Fridays were a disaster.
Employees blew off their work and began winding down after lunch on Thursday.
Productivity fell off a cliff.
But now, as the pandemic enters year three, norms have changed.
People are more accustomed to teleworking,
Taylor said. He now allows remote work on both Mondays and Fridays.
“Fridays from home have become institutionalized,” he said. “There’s really no turning back.”
As employers confront this new reality, they’re looking for more adaptable offices with
more communal spaces
and gathering areas
instead of traditional cubicles.
Think more
comfy couches,
coffee bars,
libraries
and patio work spaces.
“What people don’t want is to
work remotely,
together,
in the office,”
said Lenny Beaudoin, global head of workplace and design at commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group Inc..
“Why make the trip if I’m just logging onto Zoom, like I do at home?
It’s up to organizations to have better conversations and choreograph their schedules.
It can’t be haphazard.”
Perhaps most important — even more so than free food — Beaudoin said,
is the prospect of interacting with colleagues.
To that end, some firms are developing apps that offer employees a quick snapshot of who will be in the office on any given day,
along with planned events
and other perks,
so they can decide whether
getting dressed
and making the commute
is worthwhile.
“Just like nobody likes to eat in an empty restaurant,
nobody wants to go to an empty office,”
he said.
“When people do come in to work, they want a real social connection.”
That’s proven to be the case at MasterControl Inc., a software firm in Salt Lake City, where employees have reconfigured their weekly rhythm to account for end-of-week slowdowns.
The company’s fitness groups, including its running and biking clubs,
have moved Friday gatherings to earlier in the week.
Most meetings and training sessions are now on Mondays and Tuesdays,
when the largest share of employees are in the office.
“Friday, the turnout is definitely much lower — you can see that just by coming into the office and looking around,” said Alicia Garcia, the company’s chief culture officer. “We’re finding that people really appreciate that flexibility.”
There are about 50 employees — out of 1,500 — at Overstock.com Inc.’s Utah headquarters on any given day.
On Fridays, though? Hardly anybody.
The online retailer discourages meetings of any kind on Friday.
Most corporate employees opt to work longer days during the week so they can take every other Friday off.
But even for those who don’t, the last day of the workweek has become a much-needed respite from never-ending meetings and messages, said chief executive Jonathan Johnson.
“Fridays are the emptiest days,” said Johnson, who also works from home that day. “The office is open if people want to come but we don’t push it.”
Johnson limits himself to
one Zoom meeting on Fridays,
then catches up on emails,
writes a weekly letter to the company’s board
and plans out the coming week.
Though sometimes he makes room for more personal errands, too.
“I will admit I kicked off at 4 o’clock last Friday to get a haircut,” he said.
“It tends to be a great catch-up day.”
https://financialpost.com/fp-work/office-fridays-over
Oct. 18, 2026 My opinion: If there's free food, I'm there.
I'm sure some of you are laughing at this part.
Have you noticed there were a lot of job articles in the news about working remotely from 2021-2024?
There are a few articles here and there now.
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