Since we’re taking summer Fridays this summer, this might be the last Friday we work in our business at Team AP Consulting / Dial Zero Marketing!! Our summer Fridays start next week (after Memorial Day), and if you’re interested in doing this in your business as well, I have some ideas and considerations for you. Plus, if you want your business to have personality, then why not bring those values to the team?
Considering Summer Fridays?
Here are a few ways to do it:
- Every Friday, the office is fully closed. This is what we’re activating this summer, every Friday off from after Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend. To make this work we will do the following:
- Out of office replies live every single Friday so our clients are reminded.
- Letting clients know in advance so they can shift any internal workings.
- Having a TB meeting on Thursdays before we close today of what’s outstanding, what’s urgent, what’s coming up, and what we need to activate first thing Monday.
- This can also be done as a solopreneur!
- Choose 4-6 Fridays for team members to take off. This only really works with a full time team with 3+ members. By allowing your team to choose a few days off, you still have hands on deck to support clients if needed. I did not choose this option because my FT team members are so siloed in what they do (aka I don’t have 3 people in similar/the same roles), that if our graphic designer is out, we don’t have a replacement for her. So we might as well just all be off.
- Close the office at noon each week. I like this option as well because it gives you a shorter day. However, when I worked in corporate, this structure either meant that we all were so wildly unproductive for those 3-4 hours, orrrrr I had to “stay late” to work a full day because the business needed it, and I was already working so I might as well. I don’t hate this option at all though and think it’s a strong option!
For me, I’m a “go big” kind of person and if I want to see if we can do this forever, then let’s go hard. Let’s build a structure and system around a 4-day work week, starting with these summer Fridays. Now, if we do deploy this strategy past the summer, we’ll probably take Mondays off.
And honestly I think that’s the smarter long-term play. Mondays have a different energy than Fridays. Coming back to a full week on a Tuesday feels like a running start rather than a slow crawl. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, and summer is the perfect low-stakes test run to figure out what actually works before you commit to anything permanent.
A few things to consider:
- Tell your clients early and often. I cannot stress this enough. Nobody likes a surprise out of office, especially if they’re trying to close something out before the weekend. We sent a heads up email, we’ll have it in our signatures, and the out of office will do the rest.
- Front-load your week intentionally. With one less day, Tuesday through Thursday become your workhorses. That means Monday morning cannot be a slow start. We’re treating Mondays like the true focus day, so the week’s properly in motion and tasks are completed.
- Set the expectation internally, not just externally. Your team needs to know that Friday is a real day off, not a “check your email just in case” day. If you’re the boss and you’re still sending Slack messages at 2pm on a Friday, the boundary doesn’t actually exist.
- Build a Thursday close-out ritual. We’re doing a quick sync every Thursday to make sure nothing is falling through the cracks over the long weekend. It doesn’t have to be long, but it needs to be consistent. Think of it as your weekly landing checklist.
The goal here isn’t just to give your team a day off. It’s to prove to yourself that your business runs well even with less time, that your clients are taken care of, and that you’re not the bottleneck. Summer Fridays are the training wheels for a smarter, more sustainable way of working. Let’s enjoy the summer!
