As temperatures rise and summer approaches, small business owners might consider instituting summer work hours, such as leaving work early on Fridays, to prevent employee burnout.
As temperatures rise and summer approaches, small business owners might consider instituting summer work hours, such as leaving work early on Fridays, to prevent employee burnout.
A report released in May by the Society for Human Resource Management found that of 1,405 U.S. employees surveyed, 44% felt burned out at work, 45% felt “emotionally drained” at work, and 51% felt “exhausted” at the end of the day.
And because small businesses have lower profit margins, it’s harder for them to offer better salaries and benefits to boost morale than larger companies, so summer work hours can be a low-cost way to offer a perk to employees.
But there are some things small business owners should keep in mind before implementing reduced summer hours.
Consider your employees’ workloads and deadline schedules. If it’s not practical to give everyone the same amount of vacation time, consider staggering vacation time. Or, offer the same number of hours in the summer, but every other week instead of every week.
Once you have decided to implement reduced business hours over the summer, such as a 2pm closing time on Fridays, document the policy with start and end dates and let staff know well in advance what the policy will be.
Finally, at the end of the first season of daylight saving time, we will do a post-mortem: evaluate what worked and what didn’t, and adjust our policy as needed.
