When the warm weather comes in, you might see a drop in motivation in your employees. Who can blame them? When the weather is nice, we want to be out and enjoying it, and it makes going to work that much harder. While this may be a natural occurrence, there are ways to combat this. One option is to offer summer Fridays. Here is everything you need to know about offering summer Fridays:
What Are Summer Fridays?
Summer Fridays are when you let your employees take Fridays off or leave early on Fridays during the summer months. This benefit gives employees flexibility in their schedules and more time to enjoy the summer, resulting in higher productivity and motivation.
Benefits of Summer Fridays
Because of the frequent dip in motivation during the summer months, employees may be susceptible to burnout. Having time to recuperate each week can help employees rest and prevent burnout. Also, giving employees something to look forward to at the end of the week can make them more energetic when they are at work. Besides that, offering summer Fridays can attract new talent and give your company a competitive edge when it comes to hiring.
Disadvantages of Summer Fridays
While there are many benefits of summer Fridays, there are also some difficulties. For some companies, reduced hours on Fridays aren’t possible. Retail, food, and hospitality industries likely need to stay open for normal hours on Fridays, regardless of the summer months. Even if your business doesn’t need to stay open on Fridays, it can still be difficult to get customers and vendors used to your new schedule and fit in all the work for the week without Fridays.
Schedule Options
To deal with some of the difficulties of fitting a week’s worth of work into four days, there are different schedule options you could consider for summer Fridays. First, you can offer a part day off instead of the whole Friday so employees can get necessary work done and still take a break. Another option is to increase the hours worked on Monday-Thursday. If you make all other days 10-hour workdays, your employees can get 40 hours of work in and take all of Friday off (commonly called four 10s). Surveying employees and finding out which options are most attractive can be a good place to start.
Employee Pay
If you choose to give summer Fridays off, you may need to change your pay schedule to match. If you usually pay your employees on Fridays, you may need to pick a different day to give paychecks. It’s also good to recognize that while salaried employees will receive the same pay regardless of if they work on Fridays, hourly employee may receive a pay cut by taking Fridays off. Discuss with your employees if this pay cut is worth the change and is feasible. If not, you may need to adjust your summer Fridays plan to fit the needs of your hourly employees.
Create a Policy
To make sure your summer Fridays are consistent and approved by employees, consider writing out your policy and having employees sign an acknowledgement. You can also ask employees for feedback as you create your policy to make sure they feel able to accomplish their work even with Fridays off. Taking these steps will ensure that everyone in your company is on the same page with your policy.
There are many ways to take care of your employees. Offering summer Fridays is just one way some companies choose to offer perks to employees during the summer months.