"A lot of people already sneak out anyways," Kropp says.
"It sends a really positive signal to employees that my company actually cares a little about me, but it's as low cost as you can get."
He says the interest in offering benefits like summer Fridays comes as organizations become flatter hierarchies, with less opportunity for promotion, and as fewer companies offer big raises.
Wage growth has remained sluggish even as the economy has improved and the unemployment rate has hit its lowest mark in decades. Unlike higher wages, better benefits are simple to put in and easy to take out if company performance falters, leading more employers to offer a buffet of new perks instead.
"Companies are looking for the alternative mechanisms they can use to engage employees," Kropp said.
CEB's survey asked Fortune 1000 companies whether they offered some kind of "summer Friday" benefit to some employees, and said it could be defined as anything from a short day before the big holiday weekends to getting every Friday afternoon off from late May to early September. More than 220 responded.
Kropp said that while some different companies that answered the survey in 2015 and 2017, their results showed an increase across all industries, and the big size of the jump, versus just seeing the number tick up by a couple of percentage points, gives him confidence that the results aren't simply because of sample changes.
Of course, summer Fridays are hardly a benefit offered to all employees. They're yet another example of the bonus and benefit divide that exists as professional office workers get perks that hourly workers - who are less likely to get variable pay and often receive less cushy benefits, such as paid leave - don't.
Letting cashiers or production line workers skip out at noon the Friday before the US' Memorial Day just isn't in the cards for most companies.
Kropp said: "This is a perk that is almost exclusively offered to office workers."
