Meet ‘Soft Fridays’: One company’s pilot to turn summer Fridays permanent

Summer Fridays, a seasonal perk allowing employees to get a jumpstart on their weekends between Memorial Day and Labor Day, are on the rise. The number of job listings mentioning summer Fridays increased by 56% in 2022, ZipRecruiter found. Now, one company is considering making summer Fridays eternal.

Codeword, a communication design agency, launched an open-ended pilot program in January for “soft Fridays,” an initiative through which its roughly 100 employees can, along with their managers, decide if and how they work on Fridays. “Soft Fridays [mean] that we are trusting each other to get our work done and log off when we can on Friday,” Alli Ray, the firm’s chief of staff, told HR Brew.

Ray and her colleague Liv Allen, a VP on Codeword’s PR team, shared how soft Fridays have helped the firm’s employees be more productive and have more flexibility.

How it’s done

Ray said soft Fridays aren’t just a cool new perk—they’ve given the firm a chance to rethink how employees spend their time at work.

Managers are encouraged to set deadlines on Thursdays, rather than Fridays, Allen said, so employees can stay “sacred.” To give themselves enough time to meet those expedited deadlines, employees have limited the number of meetings they have during the week (especially on Fridays), as well as the number of employees required to attend those meetings.

Ray added that they are also required to outline agendas for meetings, as well. “We have been coining the phrase, ‘No agendie [sic], no attendee,’ which I think is really helpful for the team because, in the first five minutes, if you’ve joined a meeting and you don’t know why you’re there, you really have permission from all of us to leave,” she said.

With fewer, more focused meetings, Ray said employees are able to get more work done throughout the week, so Fridays can be dedicated to tying up loose ends and signing off early.

For Allen, who oversees Codeword’s PR team, Fridays are a day for creativity. “Personally, I find we call them, ‘deep work Fridays,’ as well as soft Fridays,” Allen told HR Brew. “A chance to not be interrupted by meetings…if there’s something that requires a bit more headspace and quiet time, it’s a great time to crack on with that.”

From pilot to permanent

Ray said soft Fridays have been well-received by employees. She hopes the program will see continued success and become a permanent part of Codeword’s culture.

“The big thing at Codeword is really that we’re treating each other as responsible adults,” Ray said. “Soft Fridays is a framing of mind where the responsibilities [are] being put back on the team to ensure that quality standards are met, and clients are happy, and work is getting done, and that they’re using their space and time to be as creative as possible.”

This article was initially published in HR Brew, a branch of Morning Brew.