‘Corporations have become very transactional’: researcher explains how to stop the Friday productivity drop
Once an unspoken cultural norm, the “Friday effect” (leaving early on a Friday) is no longer just an office-life cliché – new research has quantified the effect and uncovered a sharp drop in Friday productivity among remote and hybrid workers.
Christos Makridis, associate research professor at Arizona State University, used data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to track how working patterns have shifted since 2019; his analysis revealed that workers in remote-capable jobs worked 90 minutes less on Fridays in 2024 compared to 2019.
Makridis’ working paper, “Sync or Swim: Day-to-Day Work Scheduling and Coordination in Remote Work,” revealed that the Friday effect is concentrated in high-remotability occupations, compared to jobs requiring on-site presence which saw minimal change.
The Friday effect is also most pronounced among younger workers and those without children, and is most notable in jobs that require high amounts of collaboration – this points to a need for increased attention on when and where employees collaborate most effectively, says Makridis says.
“Where the implications for productivity emerge is when there’s shared expectations that people will be available on Friday, and then in these high-coordination intensive roles,” he says, adding that this means taking a closer look at the requirements of each job as well as individual employee strengths.
Renewing the social contract: expectations for hybrid work
Makridis’ research also shows that in high-remotability, low-coordination jobs, workers used hybrid schedules to optimize for personal time and autonomy, while in jobs with higher coordination needs, schedules remained more uniform across the week.
He explains that this divergence points to the importance of clear expectations and mutual accountability in hybrid work arrangements – a renewal of the social contract between employer and employee.
“Employers might need to give a little bit more, and then employees give a little bit more,” says Makridis.
“We’ve sort of been in this race to the bottom, where corporations have become very transactional, and then people have responded to that and been like, ‘Okay, if that's how you're going to treat me, then maybe I won't give my all.’”
The end result, Makridis concludes, is employees mitigating what they feel is unfair treatment by taking extra time where they can get it, and employers see declining productivity or quality of work.
“Employees also feel like they're not getting what they want, and so both sides are unhappy,” he says.
Hybrid work requires matching jobs to coordination needs
For roles that require less collaboration, remote work on Fridays may not harm productivity, Makridis stresses. However, in high-coordination roles, a lack of shared expectations about availability can create friction on a team level when expectations aren’t made clear.
“Quality suffers, there's hard feelings where one employee feels like the other employee dropped the ball, and so that creates discontentment and further disengagement,” he says.
“So, I think intentionality is the key word. That's part of the solution.”
A lot of companies are still stuck in the status quo, Makridis adds, and compares human capital re-assessment to resource management: “It’s like when you go check the meter of an electrical utility, you need to figure out how much energy is being given off, how much is required, and check to make sure that the thing is still what you expected it to be. Otherwise, you might need to modernize or revise it, change the job posting, etc.”
Instead of being revamped from square one, jobs have new responsibilities and tasks added to them, Makridis explains. This includes adding required credentials for a role instead of taking them away.
It’s a practice that is no longer feasible in today’s environment, and employers that fail to update risk losing valuable talent to the Friday effect.
“A lot of job postings don't really change with the economy that we're in and the needs that are emerging and the capabilities that are out there,” he says.
“A lot of corporate work environments, you're kind of just doing it for the paycheque. And so if you're just a mercenary for hire as a result … you might look for taking liberties wherever you can.”
Roles that are determined to be high-coordination will need to be placed in schedules that emphasize in-person or other collaboration-friendly locations or communication styles, “but if it doesn't require that much coordination, then hey, if somebody is able to deliver on the output, the KPIs, from wherever they are, maybe it’s not the biggest issue.
