Your employees may be too burned out to enjoy summer Fridays

Summer is here, and with summer comes summer Fridays, the practice of letting employees leave work early on the last day of the workweek. (We’re big believers at Fast Company.) A new survey of over 1,000 Americans between the ages of 18 and 42 has revealed a number of interesting details about how employees view summer Fridays. Conducted in May by research firm Material on behalf of Optimum Nutrition, the survey found that:

• Employees overwhelmingly love summer Fridays: 86% of employees who have summer Fridays say they want to take advantage of the perk, even if they have a lot of work to do, and 71% of parents say they want to spend time with their kids on summer Fridays.
• They aspire to use summer Fridays to get active: About 46% of millennials and Gen Z said they want to use summer Friday to run or walk, 32% to bike, and 17% to play a sport.
• But most are exhausted: However, when it gets right down to it, 53% of employees report being exhausted on Friday, and 62% of employees report canceling plans on Friday because they’re exhausted.

Here’s to hoping that employers also consider extending summer Fridays to winter Fridays and beyond.