Do we need to be honest about Fridays?

Right at the heart of contemporary work discussions is a huge unspoken issue - are we being honest about what Fridays have become?

This new US data by Flex Index, showing that only 8% of hybrid firms ask for attendance on Fridays, is almost certainly reflective of trends in the UK and Europe. We also know from data from Nick Bloom that Friday is the biggest WFH day of the week .

But it’s revealing to talk to people about their own experience of this. I’ve met several organisations who use Friday as a meeting-free day (to allow team members to chow down on emails and admin). Others tell me that their Fridays are a much slower pace, where meetings peter out mid-morning.

If the etiquette of modern working is constantly evolving then there’s a growing sense that the most heinous thing that anyone can do to a colleague is to put a Friday afternoon meeting in their calendars.

So, let’s be real, is this how the reality of a four day week will take hold for most of us? That Friday will be kind of a catch-up day for those who need it but that many of us will work at half speed, casually ‘keeping an eye on things’. In my recent discussion with the FT’s Isabel Berwick she reminded me that Kellogg’s UK operate a ‘summer Friday’ programme: if you've done all your work, you can knock off at lunchtime on Friday . Is this becoming the unspoken norm of work?

The suspicion of this new reality for Fridays has certainly been seen in actions of some companies over the last few months. A couple of months ago Deutsche Bank made a very specific change to their WFH policies, banning Mondays at home if the preceding Friday was out of the office . It looked like it was intentionally targeting the colleagues who seemed to be jetting off on long weekends and Working From the Beach.

This week, the new co-owner of Manchester United has ordered all non-football staff back into the office in an attempt to reboot the culture of the organisation . Employees reportedly felt the mandate was ‘insulting and over-the-top’. But critically Jim Ratcliffe brought data to the showdown, citing the fact that his other company saw much lower email traffic on Fridays . It was almost as if, Fridays wasn’t a fully powered day of work.

(None of this answers the logistical complications of implementing this. It seems lots of the desk space at Old Trafford has been repurposed for corporate hospitality and there aren’t enough work stations anymore.)

Last year The Economist wrote a review of hybrid working, recognising that while it wasn’t more productive, was better for employee motivation :

Several surveys have found employees are willing to accept pay cuts for the option of working from home. Having satisfied employees on slightly lower pay, in turn, might be a good deal for corporate managers.

This is why I’m very keen to see new data on the levels of workplace burnout. If a new, slower speed Friday is gradually becoming the norm for many organisations, maybe this is the answer to burnout that we’ve been looking for.

While people might tut and bemoan a lazy new generation of workers, a slower pace Friday is in fact preceded by an ‘always on’ Monday to Thursday. We’re still working at a pace unprecedented in previous generations. But it might be that we’ve just found a way to make it work.

Share what your firm does. What does your Friday look like?

Urgh after naming last week’s newsletter “Workplace crushes, clocksuckers & what we're doing in bed” I pressed send. Then noticed this image (below) that explained the second term had dropped out. Panic debate in my head, do I re-send it with the image? Decided against it. So it just looked really really odd.

A week of hating myself, so at least it wasn’t all in vain.

• An occasional check-in on the commercial real estate sector, office loan defaults are at record levels and trending upwards . (If this is a slow moving 2008 style crash, fingers crossed the tax payer doesn’t end up footing the bill)
• In the US there is a growing backlash to the idea of DEI initiatives. The rise of these programs in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder is now framed by detractors as a wave of wokeness that has ruined work. (I generally subscribe to the view that use of the word of ‘woke’ generally says more about the person saying it than what they are discussing). One example of this blowback came in the form of Jackass-in-Chief, Elon Musk, suggesting that Boeing’s issues were down to DEI initiatives winning out over excellence. This Washington Post article details the way that diversity and inclusion initiatives are evolving
• I’m very sceptical about Bridgewater Associates the ‘radical transparency’ firm founded by Ray Dalio . (This is the organisation where everyone is required to rate every interaction with colleagues). I enjoyed this TikTok by someone who worked there for a year and a half . Sounds like a toxic cult, she describes it as like an episode of Black Mirror: (she refers to 2 previous posts but they’ve been taken down now)