The Short Friday Question
Your team finishes at 2:30 on Fridays. It's a nice perk, everyone loves it, and productivity hasn't suffered. But then someone in HR (possibly you) has a thought: if Sarah always books Fridays off and James always books Mondays off, is Sarah getting a worse deal? After all, she's technically taking less "time off" in hours, even though they're both using the same number of leave days.
Welcome to one of those HR questions that seems straightforward until you actually think about it. With flexible and compressed working patterns becoming increasingly common, more organisations are bumping into this issue. Let's work through whether it's actually a problem, and what to do about it if it is.
The Maths Behind the "Unfairness"
First, let's acknowledge that yes, there is a technical imbalance. Consider a fairly typical schedule:
- Monday to Thursday: 8:30am to 5:30pm (8 hours working)
- Friday: 8:30am to 2:30pm (5 hours working)
If one employee takes ten Mondays off throughout the year, they've received 80 hours of time away from work. If another takes ten Fridays off, they've received 50 hours. That's a 30-hour gap, or nearly four full working days.
Scale that up to someone's entire annual leave allowance and the difference could theoretically be significant. A person who exclusively books short days would get noticeably less actual time off than someone booking full-length days.
So yes, the maths checks out. There is an imbalance. But here's where theory meets reality.
Why It Rarely Matters in Practice
In over a decade of working with HR teams on leave management, I've seen this concern raised occasionally but almost never become an actual problem. Here's why:
People Don't Optimise Their Leave
Employees book leave based on when they need or want time off, not based on complex calculations about maximising their hours. They're thinking about school holidays, family visits, that Friday concert, or simply needing a long weekend. Nobody is sitting with a spreadsheet working out the hourly value of each day.
Week-Long Holidays Even Things Out
The bulk of most people's annual leave goes on full weeks: the summer fortnight, Christmas, perhaps a week in spring. These weeks include Friday regardless of its length, so the "short Friday advantage" only applies to the handful of individual days people book throughout the year.
Short Fridays Are Already a Perk
There's an argument that the short Friday itself is the benefit. Employees finishing early every week are already getting something valuable. If someone "loses out" by booking that day as leave, they've still enjoyed 51 other short Fridays that year.
It Balances Naturally
Most employees book a mix of days over time. Some Fridays, some Mondays, some mid-week days. Over the course of a year or a career, these variations tend to average out without anyone actively managing them.
When It Might Actually Be an Issue
All that said, there are scenarios where the imbalance could become a genuine concern:
Extreme compressed patterns: A 9/80 schedule (where employees work nine-hour days and get every other Friday off entirely) creates more significant variation than a slightly shorter Friday. If your Monday is 9 hours and your alternate Friday is zero, the discrepancy is more pronounced.
Hourly or shift-based environments: In workplaces where hours are already tracked precisely for payroll, employees may be more aware of (and sensitive to) hourly discrepancies in leave as well.
Union or compliance requirements: Some collective agreements or regulatory frameworks specify leave in hours rather than days. If that applies to you, you may not have a choice in the matter.
How to Handle It in a Day-Based System
Most annual leave management systems track leave in days or half-days, not hours. This is intentional: it keeps things simple, matches how most employment contracts define leave entitlement, and reflects how people actually think about time off.
If you're using a day-based system and want to address potential imbalances, here are some practical approaches:
Option 1: Do Nothing (Recommended for Most)
Seriously. For the vast majority of organisations, this is the right answer. Trust that things balance out, and don't create administrative complexity solving a problem that isn't causing actual harm. Employees are entitled to their leave and can book whichever days suit them.
Option 2: Adjust Allowances for Extreme Cases
If you have genuinely compressed hours where working days vary dramatically (9 hours versus 6 hours, for example), you could calculate leave allowance based on average daily hours rather than standard days. Your 25-day allowance might become 23 days to account for shorter average working days. This is more common in organisations with 9/80 or 4-day week patterns.
Should You Switch to Hours-Based Tracking?
Some organisations do track leave in hours. It's precise, it's mathematically fair, and it eliminates the discrepancy entirely. But it comes with costs:
- Administrative overhead increases significantly
- Employees find it harder to understand their remaining leave at a glance
- Booking leave becomes more complicated (is this a 7-hour day or an 8-hour day?)
- Most employment contracts and statutory minimums are defined in days or weeks, creating translation issues
For the overwhelming majority of organisations, the simplicity of day-based tracking outweighs the theoretical precision of hours. The "unfairness" of variable day lengths is a rounding error in the broader context of employee experience.
The Bigger Picture
Here's the thing about leave management: perfect mathematical fairness isn't the goal. The goal is a system that employees understand, that managers can administer without excessive burden, and that supports your organisation's culture and operational needs.
A slightly shorter Friday doesn't undermine that. If anything, flexible working patterns like early Friday finishes contribute to employee satisfaction in ways that far outweigh any theoretical leave imbalance.
If you find yourself spending significant time worrying about the hourly value of different leave days, that energy is probably better directed elsewhere. Focus on the things that actually affect employee experience: clear policies, fair approval processes, adequate staffing coverage, and managers who support their teams in taking the leave they're entitled to.
The short Friday "problem" is, for most organisations, not really a problem at all. And that's genuinely good news, because you've got enough on your plate already.
