NEW YORK — With summer having gotten off to a scorching start, workers across the country may be dreaming of a seaside escape or cutting out early to watch a movie in an air-conditioned theater.

For some, that can be a reality. Business owners have found that offering summer hours – a reduced schedule on Fridays, usually between Memorial Day and Labor Day — can be a way to boost employee morale. Workers are able to deal with summer childcare gaps, return to the office refreshed and feel like their job values them, owners say.

Reduced hours in the summer months can also enable smaller businesses to stand out to prospective employees in a competitive talent marketplace.

“When smaller employers have less resources and they want to be more competitive with attracting and retaining quality talent, they want to be creative with the benefits that they offer. And one of the benefits they can offer would be flexible time in the summer,” said Rue Dooley, a knowledge advisor at the Society for Human Resources Management.

Special summer schedules don’t work for all types of industries, however. And it takes some trial-and-error to figure out the best option for each company.

Michael Wieder, co-founder of Lalo, which makes baby and toddler products, thought summer hours were a good fit for his 32 employees because so many of them – about 75% — are parents.

His staffers work remotely and are spread across the U.S. and several other countries. Since founding the company in 2019, he tried various summer hour schemes, such as offering every other Friday off, but the current system works the best, he said. On Fridays, the business closes at 1 p.m. local time. Staffers also get four-day weekends for Memorial Day, Labor Day and July 4th.

“We know that childcare is harder during the summer,” he said. “Summer is a time where people do like to take time with their family or take trips, and we want to be able to reward our employees with some additional time with their families.”

Greg Hakim, owner of Corporate Ink in Boston, which offers PR services to emerging tech companies, said he uses summer hours as both a recruitment and retention tool. He plays up summer hours in job descriptions and said the perk has helped him retain staff – particularly during the pandemic.

“It’s just helped us retain our team during the ‘Great Resignation,’ people are just like losing people left and right,” he said. “And I think we went 23 months without having someone resign. And that’s just such an important benefit and competitive advantage.”

For some companies, summer hours work so well they’ve gone even further. Chris Langer, co-founder of digital marketing agency CMYK, has 14 staffers who all usually work in the company’s New York studio.

In 2014, rather than offer Friday afternoons off, he started offering entire Fridays off during the summer –- every other week. Then, last year, Langer started hearing chatter about the four-day work week, so he decided to try that out during the summer.

If a big project is due, he might call people in on a Friday, but so far, that has only happened twice since CMYK instituted the four-day week.

“It is more stressful in terms of getting the work done throughout the week, but the day (off) was much more of a payoff,” he said.