Whether it’s the aftereffect of work-from-home edicts during the pandemic or employers determining that hybrid work schedules are here to stay, one employee trend continues to grow—no one wants to work on Fridays anymore. One of the easiest ways to determine that is by noticing that rush hour traffic that day is the least congested of the week.
Many employers that once held casual Fridays, ice cream Fridays, or bagel Fridays to make the end of the week more appealing have increasingly found that the employees just don’t want to be there. Researchers at Texas A&M School of Public Health recently studied Friday work habits. They determined that productivity on that day significantly dipped whether employees worked in the office or remotely.
Mark Benden, a professor of environmental and occupational health at Texas A&M and one of the study’s authors, told The Epoch Times that employers should ask, “What are we missing if employees aren’t working on Friday?”
“The problem is there are a high number of workers today that are held to the clock. If you have to sit at your desk until five on Friday, what are we really getting from that time? Wouldn’t it be more helpful to take the afternoon off and do some errands with your family?”
However, some companies are putting their collective feet down to stop the Friday flex trend. According to the Financial Post, United Parcel Service Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Deutsche Bank AG have banned staff from working from home on Friday and the following Monday.
“One of the reasons employers lean on the clock is because they don’t have any other way to measure contribution by those employees,” Cyndi Gave, a Charlotte-based employee behavioral expert and owner of The Metiss Group, told The Epoch Times. “A lot of things that happened during COVID included people working from home who got into a tactical mindset of ‘What do I have to do next?’ The rules of engagement kept changing and people were trying to figure out how to get through the day.”
Whether working from home or in the office, employees are spending less time at work, and not just on Fridays. A report last year from workforce analytics company ActivTrak found that between the first quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2023, the average daily time spent working dropped 15 percent, or 47 minutes. The average worker also checks out earlier, signing off at 4:03 p.m., but begins work earlier on Friday.
“It seems from our research that Friday afternoons are a bust. It’s possible that there’s been some meeting of the minds with no computers turned off, but the more likely scenario is they’ve checked out,” Mr. Benden said. “The bigger question I ask is if employees want Friday off and the employer agrees, are they willing to take a 10 percent pay cut? No one wants that conversation.”
In another study last year, ClassPass, a subscription app allowing gym, salon, and spa members to access those locations, found that Fridays were the most popular day of the week to schedule wellness and beauty services. A study from payment platform Square also found that Friday lunchtimes are not a thing anymore and have shifted to to the now more popular Saturday brunch.
Employees are also finding more creative ways to take time off, even though they could be setting themselves up to be fired eventually. One of those workplace maneuvers is the practice of what is being referred to as “coffee badging” when a worker goes to the office for a few hours in the morning, shows their face and leaves in the afternoon, according to video conference solution company Owl Labs.
In its State of Hybrid Work 2023 study, the company found that 58 percent of hybrid employees have employed the practice and 8 percent of those who haven’t wanted to try it.
Ms. Gave is concerned that remote and hybrid workers have developed other habits that aren’t necessarily contributing to workplace efficiency or productivity. “A lot of people who still work from home or on a hybrid schedule got into the habit of thinking, “I got stuff off my list and now I’m more productive. The fact is they’re getting stuff off their list, but they’re not contributing to the organization,” she said. “It’s a problem if I’m paying you to be a knowledge worker, and you’re only checking things off your list.”
However, according to Professor Braden and his Texas A&M study results, the new generation of workers in a healthy job market will expect companies to be more lenient on time off if they want to land the best and brightest candidates.
“Now it’s the companies saying to job candidates, “How much time do you want off?” he said. “These are really important talent issues. We have 75,000 students at A&M and many have on their minds, “What’s your policy on remote work and what are the options? This absolutely impacts the new hires of new graduates.”
