We’re Working Less on Fridays Than We Used to, and That’s OK

livemint.com:

All those bosses still grumbling about the remote-work ethic are right about one thing: We’re working less on Fridays than we used to—some of us, a lot less. Monday through Thursday, American work life has returned to some approximation of normal. The rush hour is back.

Offices are sort of buzzing again, especially midweek. Sometimes we even wear ties and pointy heels. Yet in the past couple of years, the once-casual Friday slid further into work-leisure limbo land—emerging less a full-on workday and more a staging ground for the weekend.

Yes, the Friday office is a ghost town, but that’s only part of it. Compared with early 2021, when the remote workday often bled into evening, the average worker now signs off an hour earlier, at 4:03 p.m., according to an analysis of 75,000 workers across North America by workforce analytics firm ActivTrak. That’s also an hour earlier than the average quitting time the rest of the week (though we tend to start work a tad earlier on Fridays, too).

So why isn’t the sky falling, and worker productivity along with it? Growing evidence suggests it’s because taking it easier one day of the week can supercharge performance on others, plus mitigate the costs of worker burnout and turnover. Some bosses are even discovering their staff work more effectively when they’re left to sort their Fridays on their own. The Friday cure-all Companies have largely ceded Fridays to the work-from-home camp as a compromise.

Shorter Fridays at work are showing up in other facets of life, too. ClassPass, a subscription app that lets members access thousands of gyms, salons and spas, found that Fridays were the most popular day of the week in 2023 for scheduling wellness and beauty services. Weekly spending at