What Are Summer Office Hours?

With the arrival of longer days and warmer summer weather, employers may want to rethink their operating schedule to reflect the seasonal changes. Some businesses tend to adopt revised working hours during the summer to help boost employee morale, create a company culture that fosters retention, and improve the overall employee experience.

Understanding what summer office hours are and how to implement them can be beneficial for your employees and HR team. They are also a nice employee perk/benefit that can help move your business ahead in the competition for talent. Here’s a guide for managing summer office hours for your workplace.

What are Summer Office Hours?

Generally, summer hours are an employee benefit designed to reduce working hours for employees or allow flexible working hours during warmer weather months. Generally, businesses that adopt a summer office hours policy will run from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The primary goal of implementing summer hours is to provide employees with an additional benefit that will help enhance the employee experience.

Summer hours may also aid in boosting:

Employee retention
Employee engagement
Productivity
Employee morale
Company culture

Before considering a summer office hours policy, it’s important to evaluate how your business operates to ensure a summer hours policy makes sense. For example, businesses in the retail and hospitality industries require standard operating hours to serve their customers. Healthcare industry businesses tend to face a similar issue, with some even operating with around-the-clock scheduling hours, leaving little room to adjust employee hours.

Taking into consideration your business’s peak operating hours and industry scheduling techniques will help you understand if your business can employ summer office hours.

Strategies for Summer Office Hours

There are multiple ways for businesses to adopt a summer office hour schedule. Choosing an optimized workforce scheduling strategy for the summer depends on your business operations and employee preferences. Here are some summer hours scheduling ideas:

Flex Time

Flexible work hours or “flex time” allow employees to choose when they want to clock in and clock out of work, as long as they are present during core working hours. For example, an employee may choose to come in at 8 AM instead of 9 AM, allowing them to leave an hour early.

Remote and Hybrid Work

Allowing employees to work from home or adopt a hybrid work strategy during the summer can also improve work-life balance. This option can also be combined with other strategies, such as flex time.

Employers can consider implementing remote work options in the following ways:

Offer fully remote days each week
Use hybrid days for both remote and in-office days
Allow impromptu remote days following the weekend or holidays

Aside from being home sooner when work is done during the summer, employees who like to take summer vacations, or who even have a summer home, can still work when they are away from their typical residence. This allows them to enjoy the things they love about the summer without sacrificing pay or productivity.

Early Exits

This summer hours scheduling strategy gives employees the ability to leave work early on Friday, so long as required hours are fulfilled earlier in the week. For example, an employee may work an extra hour each day from Monday through Thursday, allowing them to take a half-day on Friday.

While there is no limit to how many extra hours an employee may spend between Monday and Thursday, it is not recommended to exceed more than 4 extra work hours in the span of four days.

Staggered Scheduling

Lastly, for businesses with extended operating hours, such as retail, hospitality, and healthcare, staggering employee start times can offer a reasonable summer hour solution. The concept works similarly to flex time, except employers arrange schedules for employees to come and go as groups with specified start and end times per group.

Staggered employee schedules can benefit your business during the summer months by:

Matching the seasonal demand of customers by ensuring the right number of staff are working at the right time
Reducing employee lateness during peak rush hour times and summer road construction
Increasing staff coverage, allowing employees to have more flexibility for start times, end times, and time off

Creating a Summer Hours Work Policy

After deciding which strategies work best for your company, the next step is to have your summer office hours written as a company policy. Standardizing summer hours for a company policy minimizes any confusion employees may have with their working hours and helps you avoid any issues with employee availability.

The policy should at least include a description of the strategy used, any limitations you want to put in place, and the time frame in which summer office hours are observed.

Here are a few other things to consider when creating a summer office hours policy:

Communicate with Employees and Customers

Businesses with a summer hours policy should include it in their handbook. Some businesses may even create their own poster to display in the workplace. However, you should also communicate your policy to your staff each year. Meetings or company-wide emails are a great way to accomplish this.

Depending on the type of business, it may also be worth communicating these changes, each year, to your customers.

Maintain Labor Law Compliance When Creating a Summer Hours Work Policy

You’ll also want to ensure that your business maintains compliance when creating a new policy for summer office hours. Some labor laws that may impact your summer office hours policy include:

Predictive Scheduling Laws

Predictive scheduling laws are designed to protect workers from any last-minute scheduling decisions that could impact their income. This requires employers to create schedules in advance, generally at least 2 weeks before the days scheduled.

Predictive scheduling laws generally apply to retail and hospitality businesses and may apply to businesses based on employer size and compensation amounts.

Before rolling out a summer hours policy, it’s important to understand if your state or locality has predictive scheduling laws. If your summer hours strategy requires scheduling changes such as staggered shifts, your company must give employees an accurate notice in advance of the affected shifts.

Check with your state’s Department of Labor to see if predictive scheduling applies to your business.

Summer Work Hours for Minors

Many states have restrictions on working hours for minors, primarily regarding late hours. However, during the summer (usually between June 1st and Labor Day), minor employees can work later hours, but may still have curfews.

On the federal level, for example, minor employees under 16 are allowed to work until 9 pm as opposed to 7 pm during the school year, while there are no late work restrictions for minor employees aged 16 and 17.

Some states may allow minor employees to work up to midnight. States may also require minor employees to work a particular time frame during the summer, which may affect scheduling for start and end times.

When adjusting your business’s summer hours, your company must ensure compliance with federal and state child labor laws regarding work hour limits and time frames.

Because each state has varying child labor laws regarding work hours, it’s vital to check with your state’s Department of Labor to ensure your summer hour policy is compliant with child labor work hour limits.

Overtime Laws

Employees working more than 40 hours a week are entitled to overtime pay, though not all employees may receive overtime pay. Overtime laws defined by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) help determine which employee classifications can receive overtime pay.

Many states also have unique overtime legislation that can include:

Daily overtime limits
Additional overtime-exempt employee classifications
Varying overtime exempt salary thresholds

Employee overtime laws can affect your summer hours scheduling strategy, particularly when implementing an early exit strategy, which involves employees accruing overtime daily. Please consult your state’s Department of Labor for information on any additional overtime laws.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Should Managers Handle Teams With Differing Summer Hour Schedules?

Managers should establish core collaboration hours when all team members are available, even if start and end times vary. Clear communications, shared calendars, and regular check-ins help ensure projects stay on track despite differing schedules.

Should Summer Office Hours Be Offered to All Employees Equally?

Not always. While consistency is important, not all roles or departments can realistically adopt the same schedule due to operational demands. Employers should aim for alternative solutions, such as offering shift flexibility, additional PTO, or staggered scheduling for teams that cannot reduce hours.

How Should PTO and Holiday Policies Interact With Summer Office Hours?

Employers should clearly define how PTO is calculated during adjusted schedules. For example, if employees work four 10-hour days, a "day off" may need to be deducted as 10 hours instead of 8. Clarifying this in a work policy and effectively managing PTO requests can clearly prevent disputes and payroll inconsistencies.

Can Summer Office Hours Create Compliance Risks for Remote or Hybrid Employees?

Remote or hybrid workers can create compliance risks, particularly for employees who are non-exempt from FLSA requirements. Knowing the key difference between exempt and non-exempt employees, enforcing consistent use of time & attendance systems, and reinforcing company policies help establish expectations around logging time, breaks, and availability.

Managing Summer Office Hours

While implementing a summer hours policy for your business can be a quality change of pace for your employees, deciding the right strategy for your business can be difficult. Understanding your operations, industry, and employee needs is key to choosing which strategies will work best.

Are you ready to roll out a summer office hours policy but need additional guidance on where to start? You may want to consider reaching out to an HR consulting company for assistance. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help with summer office hours and other employee handbook challenges.

What Are Summer Office Hours?

Robin Imbrogno