School’s Out for the Summer, So Why Can’t the Same Be True for Work?

We grew up having our summers free, out of school. Why can’t that yearly sabbatical continue into adulthood?

Could you imagine having the summers off? We’d be at Lake Palestine every day sunning ourselves, not thinking about conference calls and work meetings and deadlines. We could go the the movies whenever we wanted, and go out to lunch and down a margarita or two with our quesadillas if we wanted to. You can see I’ve put some thought into this.

Some offices do relax a bit during the summer. My spouse’s office hours end at 3:00pm four days out of the week during the summer. What summer benefit would you most like to see?

A new OfficeTeam survey says it breaks down like this in terms of what workers want:

• Flexible schedules, 41 percent
• Leave early on Fridays, 28 percent
• Activities like as a company picnic or potluck, 11 percent
• More relaxed dress code, 5 percent

The rest said “other” or didn’t answer.

One in ten people want a pot luck? Really? And the rest of us might think that’s kind of a whippin’. Sometimes it’s nice to skip the two-hour pot luck and leave work two hours earlier.

Seventy-five percent of the HR managers surveyed said they DO offer flex hours during the summer. Hope it’s yours!