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 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.
Generally, summer hours are an employee benefit designed to reduce working hours for employees or allow flexible working hours during warmer weather months. 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:
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.
There are multiple ways for businesses to adopt a summer office hour schedule. Choosing an optimized employee scheduling strategy for the summer depends on your business operations and employee preferences. Here are some summer hours scheduling ideas:
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.
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:
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.
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 through Thursday, it is not recommended to exceed more than 4 extra work hours in the span of four days.
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:
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 regarding their working hours and helps you avoid any issues with employees.
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:
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. Townhall 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.
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 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.
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.
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 help determine which employee classifications can receive overtime pay.
Many states also have unique overtime legislation that can include:
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.
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.