Poll: Does your company offer 'summer hours' ?

Does your company offer summer hours?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 2.3%
  • No

    Votes: 32 36.4%
  • I have no idea what this is

    Votes: 54 61.4%

  • Total voters
    88
Consigliere
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I am going to pitch 'summer hours' to my business and suggest a rota but obviously need to sell it.

For example, why would they let the business do it? Answer is morale but also I'm going to prove how little customer interactions we have from 3pm - 6pm on Fridays using Zendesk, phone and LiveChat data.

How does it work for your company?

Poll please, perhaps a simple Yes or No.
 
Was a common thing when I worked in agency-land.

Didn't have to work any longer during the week but if you genuinely had wrapped up your work you could scoot off early on a Friday afternoon. Which basically meant everyone packed up and went down to the pub from 2pm'ish, miss those days!

If you had a client call or a meeting booked in though you had to suck it up and get on with it.

I work fully remote now so can have summer hours whenever I please (within reason!)
 
I am going to pitch 'summer hours' to my business and suggest a rota but obviously need to sell it.

For example, why would they let the business do it? Answer is morale but also I'm going to prove how little customer interactions we have from 3pm - 6pm on Fridays using Zendesk, phone and LiveChat data.

How does it work for your company?

Poll please, perhaps a simple Yes or No.

Annualised hours is a thing and I've been asked to scope the impact more than once.

TBH I've never been a huge advocate, but then I've never managed a really seasonal business and with high attrition rates the work involved in making it happen always put me off from a personal/department workload perspective.

It definitely makes sense in the right environment though.
 
We do it all year around. Start an hour earlier every day and knock off at lunchtime on a Friday. Has benefits in winter too as it means I have some daylight time outside of weekends for getting odd jobs done.
 
It was an option in a previous job - early start on a Friday and only 6 hour day - personally didn't see any drop in productivity in the department I worked (LOL) compared to any other day of the week to be frank as most people kind of wound down Friday afternoon anyhow :s

EDIT: We didn't do an extra hour a day mon-thurs though, though there was an expectation of a little more flexibility mon-thurs if doing it.

A weird one though as Friday afternoons always seemed to stretch on forever while the weekend would go relatively quickly - but at the same time a huge quality of life boost IMO as you get Friday afternoon to unwind from the working week and then more ready to do stuff Saturday/Sunday.
 
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Nope. It's quite hard to do 'flexitime' (of whatever description) in consulting as it doesn't give a great impression if you're all in the boozer at 3pm, although depending on the client culture it might be OK, and I'd say things are improving with remote working generally giving a bit more flexibility and lower expectations on 'presenteeism'.
We have "summer days" instead which is basically additional holiday that can only be used in summer months.

As a rule I think these type of policies are most effective in organisations where everyone is on the same schedule, i.e. if the whole company is off from 3pm on Friday that's kind of OK because it means nobody is trying to work and getting blocked due to colleagues being absent.
You have to be careful as it can foster resentment if most people are posting selfies from beer gardens meanwhile a few poor souls are left behind in meetings / customer facing / whatever. If you can rota it so people don't miss out in aggregate that's better, but often you find that certain roles are harder to cover than others.

More generally to Roff's point above I don't particularly like the 'unwritten rule' that some follow about Friday afternoons being a wind down where you mess about, long lunch break, leaving early etc. Again that really creates resentment when you are there slogging your guts out until 6pm or later, people apologising for putting in a meeting at 4pm on a Friday etc like they are embarrassed at asking you to work during your contracted working hours. That said, whilst I don't like it I do acknowledge it and would agree that productivity is probably reduced on Friday afternoons so schemes like this can be beneficial if it increases work done at other times with little drop in Friday output.

There's probably a few industries where it would actually be frowned upon if you WEREN'T in the pub on a Friday afternoon... recruitment, London Market insurance from a few years back etc.
 
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WTH is summer hours?

An early finish on Friday?
If this is what you mean by summer hours, then at my last two jobs this was standard all year round. At one of my jobs you could be done by 12 with a 7am start and working half an hour longer on one of the preceding days.

My current job unfortunately does not have this.
 
a lot of Swedish company's and local government work 1 extra hour in winter times so can finish 1h early in summer.

Not me. :(
 
Generally I'm seeing a lot of people currently leaning towards a 4 day working week, even if it means working more hours the days they are in - though obviously most people want to work less. As per HangTime's post above though how feasible it is depends industry to industry and/or whether you have the resources there to support having more staff doing less hours individually to cover.

One of my colleagues currently is in the process of approaching management to go down to 4 days - but we have a situation there handily where someone else wants to increase their hours. Personally I prefer having more people on less hours as well as it gives more options when you do need someone to cover or pickup on busy periods, etc. but a lot of companies seem to prefer less people on more hours as I guess it is easier to manage even though that gives you less options to fallback on when needed.
 
We've had flexitime for the last 3-4 years but you need to be in at least 4 hours a day so no 12 hour days for a Friday off unfortunately but it does mean I can work a longer couple of days in the week and be done by Friday lunchtime and I can generally work a 6-2 shift as long as I've got no meetings meaning I get more useful time at the end of the day.

Makes for a much nicer work/life balance.
 
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Nope. It's quite hard to do 'flexitime' (of whatever description) in consulting as it doesn't give a great impression if you're all in the boozer at 3pm, although depending on the client culture it might be OK, and I'd say things are improving with remote working generally giving a bit more flexibility and lower expectations on 'presenteeism'.
We have "summer days" instead which is basically additional holiday that can only be used in summer months.

As a rule I think these type of policies are most effective in organisations where everyone is on the same schedule, i.e. if the whole company is off from 3pm on Friday that's kind of OK because it means nobody is trying to work and getting blocked due to colleagues being absent.
You have to be careful as it can foster resentment if most people are posting selfies from beer gardens meanwhile a few poor souls are left behind in meetings / customer facing / whatever. If you can rota it so people don't miss out in aggregate that's better, but often you find that certain roles are harder to cover than others.

More generally to Roff's point above I don't particularly like the 'unwritten rule' that some follow about Friday afternoons being a wind down where you mess about, long lunch break, leaving early etc. Again that really creates resentment when you are there slogging your guts out until 6pm or later, people apologising for putting in a meeting at 4pm on a Friday etc like they are embarrassed at asking you to work during your contracted working hours. That said, whilst I don't like it I do acknowledge it and would agree that productivity is probably reduced on Friday afternoons so schemes like this can be beneficial if it increases work done at other times with little drop in Friday output.

There's probably a few industries where it would actually be frowned upon if you WEREN'T in the pub on a Friday afternoon... recruitment, London Market insurance from a few years back etc.

I forsee this problem as well. There are too many account managers in our company, whose salary is directly linked to how much work they do. They are a minority, but they're irritiating. I imagine they would be the first to complain if we tried a four day week, for example, as they'd say they needed that other day. My feeling is, great, but my salary isn't tied to how much work I do, so I don't care.
 
I think what the OP is getting at is known as flexible working arrangements. Some companies will offer it, some don't. It sits somewhere between no flex arrangements and full on flexi time.
 
No!
But suggest you book a week (full or part) mid June - early September.

My friend works for BG in their back office call centre and works 4 days May - September, 5 rest of the year. Sometimes depending on weather, the winter/summer hours change - a week either way.
 
a lot of Swedish company's and local government work 1 extra hour in winter times so can finish 1h early in summer.

Not me. :(

More demand led than policy but that is basically how my job works - 25% longer hours or days of the week on peak season, 25% less off peak.
 
How does it work for your company?

We did this when I worked in the defence sector. It was fine because our customers worked on timescales that could accept it; when we were outsourced and had to deal with private sector clients it had to stop very quickly. Time is money.
 
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