Employers offer summer hours | The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

NEW YORK — Some American business owners have discovered that offering summer hours – reduced hours on Fridays, typically between Memorial Day and Labor Day – can be a way to boost employee morale.

Workers are able to cope with summer childcare interruptions, return to the office refreshed and feeling valued in their work, owners say.

Reduced hours during the summer months can also help small businesses stand out to potential employees in a competitive talent market.

“When small businesses have fewer resources and they want to be more competitive in attracting and retaining quality talent, they want to be creative in the benefits they offer. And one of the benefits they can offer would be flexible summer hours,” said Rue Dooley, knowledge advisor at the Society for Human Resources Management.

However, special summer hours do not suit all types of industries, so it is necessary to use trial and error to determine the best option for each business.

Michael Wieder, co-founder of Lalo, which makes baby and toddler products, thought the summer schedule suited his 32 employees because so many of them — about 75 percent — are parents.

His employees work remotely and are spread across the U.S. and several other countries. Since starting the company in 2019, he has tried different summer scheduling programs, such as offering every other Friday off, but the current system works best, he said. On Fridays, the company closes at 1 p.m. local time. Employees also get four-day weekends for Memorial Day, Labor Day and the Fourth of July.

“We know that child care is more difficult during the summer,” he said. “Summer is a time when people like to spend time with their families or go on trips, and we want to be able to reward our employees by allowing them to spend extra time with their families.”

Greg Hakim, owner of Corporate Ink in Boston, which provides public relations services to emerging tech companies, said he uses summer hours as both a recruiting and retention tool. He highlights summer hours in job descriptions and said the perk has helped him retain staff, especially during the pandemic when others have struggled to keep employees.

“It just helped us keep our team during the ‘Great Resignation’, people are losing people left and right,” he said.

“And I think we went 23 months without any employees quitting. That’s a very significant advantage and competitive advantage.”

Jim Christy is co-owner of Midwest Cards, a Columbus, Ohio-based trading card retailer with about 30 employees. He began offering summer hours — Fridays off after 2 p.m. — in 2021, a year after he started the business, as the pandemic upended normal work practices.

The hardest part was figuring out what to offer the people who worked in his store, who also fulfilled online orders, since they had to work regular hours to keep the store running.

He decided to give logistics employees Friday afternoons off, while the six employees who work at the store and provide customer service for online orders are off on Monday, when the store is closed. Some employees can log in remotely to answer customer questions if they wish, but it is not required.

“We couldn’t just apply one situation to everyone. So it was a little difficult,” he said.

For some companies, summer hours work so well that they’ve even pushed the pace. Chris Langer, co-founder of digital marketing agency CMYK, has 14 employees who all typically work out of the company’s studio.

In 2014, instead of offering Friday afternoons off, he started offering full Fridays off during the summer, every other week. Then, last year, Langer started hearing about the four-day workweek, so he decided to try it out during the summer.

Communicating with the company’s close-knit staff, who have all worked together for years, makes the four-day week feasible, Langer said.

“We’re a small company, so it’s easy to have a discussion with everyone about what’s real and how everyone is feeling, whether they’re feeling stressed, whether they can do their job,” he said.

If he has a big project to do, he might call people on a Friday, but so far that’s only happened twice since CMYK instituted the four-day week.

“It’s more stressful in terms of the work you have to do throughout the week, but the day (off) was much more rewarding,” he said.

Of course, summer hours don’t work for every business. Retail stores risk losing customers to national chains or others that are open longer. And employees who are paid hourly rather than a fixed salary may balk at being paid for fewer hours.

Jennifer Johnson, owner of True Fashionistas, a consignment store in Naples, Florida, thought she would try summer hours in 2022 because Naples is seasonal, with the busiest time of year ending around Easter.

From May 1st, it changed its opening hours from 10am to 6pm to 11am to 5pm. But the change didn’t work.

“We have 45 to 50 employees, and this has reduced their hours, which has upset them, and rightly so,” she said. “It’s also upset our customers who were used to our hours and wanted to shop.”

She gave up her efforts after two months and did not try again.

“I really believe that consistency is the key to everything,” she said. “Customers need to know that they can count on you to stay open. You can’t always change your hours because that’s a quick way to lose customers.”