Working Summer Fridays: Professional development tool or benefits claw-back?
Summer Fridays — that coveted early escape from the office, with some employees getting a half day through the season and others the entire day — might be your company’s most underutilized opportunity for professional development, one executive coach proposes. Still, others are skeptical about essentially taking away a much-loved employee benefit.
Kelly Meerbott, author of From Burnout to Bliss, argues that those abbreviated workdays represent far more than just a morale booster, however. “Fire your inner employee, hire your future CEO,” as Meerbott puts it, challenging employees to reframe Summer Friday hours not as time off but as strategic career investment.
Rather than viewing Summer Fridays as productivity loss, organizations may want to position them as structured professional development time, creating a benefit for employees seeking to advance their careers while strengthening their value to the company.
Meerbott proposes the following seven-point strategy:
Calendar like a tyrant, dream like a poet. Time is our most precious commodity. If your Friday afternoon is wide open, don’t wait to “see what comes up.” Block 90 minutes to write your ideal job description — not for the role you’re in, but for the one you’re too scared to admit you want. (Spoiler: The CEO you’re waiting for is you.)
Swipe left on busywork. Use the time to build intellectual equity. Read that book touted in an industry you’re curious about, or deep dive into a niche so hard it makes your resume sweat. Don’t just work in your job — work on your future.
Book a meeting with the most avoided person in your company: yourself. Self-reflection isn’t self-indulgent — it’s your strategic advantage. Ask: Am I building a life I’ll be proud of or just a LinkedIn profile I hope someone likes?
Take a nervous system lunch. Ditch the sad desk salad and regulate your stress for once. Breathwork, a cold plunge, one long scream into a pillow — whatever resets your baseline. The ROI? Better decisions, more effective leadership and not snapping at your team over a comma.
Build your bat signal. Record a 60-second video explaining who you are, what you solve and why it matters. Not the corporate drivel — the you that gets people excited. Share it. Post it. Pitch it. This is how you stop being a resume and start being a movement.
Don’t network. Ask bold questions. Invite someone fascinating to a walk-and-talk and ask bold, tough questions. Where did they fail? What haunts them? What’s the one thing they’ve never said out loud about success? This is how real connections — and career catapults — are born.
Quit something. A habit. A meeting. A loyalty that’s become a leash. Success isn’t just about what you add — it’s about what you burn to the ground.
Of course, the idea of recasting Summer Fridays as a quasi workday leads to mixed opinions on the part of workplace experts.
“‘Summer Professional Development Fridays’ doesn’t have the same ring to it as Summer Fridays, but it could work if there’s something in it for your workers,” said Kelly Heuer, vp of learning at the nonprofit Project Management Institute, which is dedicated to advancing the field of project management. Heuer suggests that employees work toward something to demonstrate their new knowledge and skills — like an industry certification, which can enhance their resumes and help them stand out from their peers.
Meanwhile, Julie Ferris-Tillman, vp and B2B tech practice lead at the PR firm Interdependence, counters that Summer Fridays are essential not for career advancement but for recovery. “Real productivity comes from rested brains, not booked calendars,” as she puts it. “Summer Fridays give employees space to single task something that matters to them, and that’s what keeps them sharp… Framing a Summer Friday as career development time feels like a bait-and-switch.”
Workers’ rights attorney John Bisnar of the California law firm Kingsley Szamet says the reimagined Summer Friday must be voluntary, so as to not be abused by management. “That will backfire,” he said. “The ideal policy is to provide employees genuine flexibility: promote development-related use of time but don’t mandate it.”