The days are getting longer, brighter, and warmer, and there’s nowhere workers want to be more on a summer’s afternoon than far away from their desks—and Kellogg’s knows it.
At Kellanova, the parent company of Kellogg’s and Pringles, U.K. employees can skip work once the clock hits 12 p.m. on a Friday from now until September.
The $20.6 billion food manufacturer said its research revealed that two-thirds of people would be willing to work harder during the rest of the week if their employer gave them Friday afternoons off.
Plus, the “Friday effect” has been well documented. Reams of research, including a study from Texas A&M University School of Public Health, highlight that workers’ productivity dips on a Friday anyway.
Still, the company’s not leaving workers’ midweek output up to chance: Those who want to start their weekend early will have to make up for lost time during the week.
What’s more, the 500-plus workers at Kellogg’s office at MediaCityUK in Salford won’t have to worry about getting too bogged down with meetings to clock off early: Since 2021, the company has run a no-meetings mandate on Friday afternoons.
It’s not clear if the company plans to roll out the plan to other branches of its global business or whether it will fall on the shoulders of burned-out middle managers to ensure workers aren’t skipping off, without completing a week’s worth of work.
Fortune has reached out to Kellanova for comment.
Are Fridays now pointless?
Summer Fridays aren’t anything new. The concept dates as far back as New York’s advertising industry in the 1960s, when executives would leave work early to drive out to the Hamptons.
Even at Kellanova, a summer scheme in some form has been around for over two decades. But now, a growing list of companies, including L’Oréal, Asos, and Nike, are following suit.
It comes as Fridays increasingly become a work-from-home day at many firms. Steven Roth, chairman of New York–based real estate giant Vornado Realty Trust and one of New York’s biggest office landlords, boldly declared that Fridays in the office are officially “dead forever.”
Some firms, including the human resources company Oyster, are now reframing the day as “focus Fridays”—essentially, the day to catch up on missed emails and get your head down while away from the buzz of the office.
Other bosses are noticing that their workers are using the pandemic-era freedom they still have on a Friday to sneakily sign off early.
New York City’s billionaire former mayor, Michael Bloomberg, claimed that remote workers are playing golf every Friday—and he may have a point. By 4 p.m. on weekdays, golf courses are packed, according to a Stanford University study.
It’s why firms are increasingly giving up on trying to make Fridays fruitful and ditching the workday altogether in favor of a four-day week. Pilots of the “100:80:100” working model—100% pay for 80% of the time, in exchange for 100% productivity—are proving to be a productivity success around the world.
But it means that for those who are still working, it’s become nearly impossible to schedule a meeting on a Friday and emails are unlikely to be read. So, with the lack of teammates online, Fridays for many may have effectively been rendered pointless anyway.
