As the United States moves further into summer, the weather and long days can bring a welcome mental health boost but can also be distracting for some employees. Instead of focusing diligently on work, they may spend their Friday afternoons mentally packing for that weekend cabin trip or sneaking out a bit early to play a round of golf.
Many employers, recognizing the strong pull summer weather has on their employees, as well as the morale boost summertime flexibility can trigger, choose to implement some variation of “summer hours,” or shortened or more flexible work hours during the summer months.
We reached out to employers and industry experts to get their thoughts on summer hours, including the pros and cons as they see them, as well as the different forms of summer hours employers have in place.
Summer Hour Variations
Summer hours can really mean whatever an employer wants. Some, like Andrew Pickett of Andrew Pickett Law, allow employees to clock out a little early at the end of the week while keeping standard hours. “Last year we moved to a flexible summer hours schedule,” says Pickett. “Our summer hours are from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Thursday, and 8 am to 3pm on Fridays. This allows us to offer our staff more flexibility during the days when there are fewer work-related activities going on in the office.”
A shorter Friday was the most frequent example of summer hours offered by employers that provided feedback. “Employees are given four Summer Fridays each year,” says Sam Olmsted, New Orleans Managing Director at Online Optimism. “Summer Fridays are days when an employee may take off the second half of the day. These occur between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend.”
Other employers extend the traditional 3-day holiday weekend associated with summer holidays like Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day into 4-day weekends by providing an extra day off. “At Voices, in the summer, we offer ‘summer shut down days,’ an extra day off on all statutory long weekends in the summer,” says David Ciccarelli, CEO of Voices. “This means that our employees enjoy a four-day weekend on long weekends, as opposed to a three-day weekend.”
Still others go even further and switch to 4-day workweeks and 3-day weekends throughout the summer months.
Chad Sorenson, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, is currently president of Adaptive HR Solutions and previously worked as vice president, director, and manager of HR for several companies in the Jacksonville, Florida, area. “Among my clients, some companies leave at lunch or early afternoon, and others may schedule 9 workdays in 10 during the summer to give more time off,” he says. “Other companies are more generous with the number of people asking for PTO days and may reduce their staffing beyond normal levels, knowing the workload may also be lighter.”
There is no one-size-fits-all model to summer hours. What works for one company may not be feasible for others. It all depends on the nature of the business and available resources.
As you consider whether and how to offer some type of summer schedule for your employees, here are some pros and cons to keep in mind.
Pros of Summer Hours
There are several benefits typically cited when it comes to offering summer hours.
Employee Morale
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of summer hours is the boost to employee morale. People just like being able to get an early start to the weekend and spending more time with family and friends in the nice weather.
“Employees have more leisure time and can enjoy the summer as they please, morale has been boosted tremendously with this change in working hours, and our staff can be more productive when they come to work,” says Pickett.
Mental Health
Other employers see summer hours as a much-needed means of recharging, giving staff the rest and relaxation they need to bring their best selves to work. Even with remote and hybrid work options and company holidays spread throughout the year, it’s still nice to have a prolonged period of greater-than-average flexibility and relaxation to help workers take stock, plan for the future, and simply de-stress.
Employee Retention and Recruitment
In a tight labor market, some companies feel almost forced to offer flexible scheduling to simply retain their existing staff. If similarly situated companies are offering summer hours, the thinking goes, a company that doesn’t offer such a perk may lose staff to competitors.
On the other side of the equation, companies that offer summer hours and other forms of flexible scheduling in industries where such flexibility is uncommon may have a leg up in the war for talent.
Cons of Summer Hours
It should come as no surprise that employers and other observers can point to a number of potential drawbacks to summer hours; after all, there’s a reason it’s only a relatively new trend that’s limited to a subset of companies.
Less Time at Work
It doesn’t take an MBA to recognize that less hours spent at work means less work gets done. And less work tends to mean less revenue and less profit. Of course, this isn’t always the case. As noted above, there are strong arguments that time lost to summer hours is more than compensated for with greater productivity during the hours that are worked.
Customer Impacts
Not all companies practice summer hours. For those that do, communicating such policies to customers can be a delicate process, and businesses with high levels of customer interaction may find that summer hours simply don’t work for them. For example, it’s probably not realistic for an emergency medical facility to institute organizationwide summer hours, as someone has to be there for when people need emergency care.
Fairness and Resentment
Some companies can offer summer hours to some staff but not others because of their different job duties. It’s natural that resentment and feelings of unfairness can grow amid such a disparity.
In addition, even for employees who are offered summer hours, it can be a bit of a hangover when summer ends and staff need to come back full time, especially when combined with the disappearance of that great summer weather.
Summer hours are a popular way for businesses to show employee appreciation and boost employee morale. But there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to summer hours, and not all businesses can offer such a program. Organizations should therefore carefully consider the pros and cons discussed above when determining whether to offer summer hours to their own staff and how best to structure these arrangements.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.