It’s 3pm on a Friday. If you’re working from home, there’s a growing chance you’ve already shut your laptop, set your Teams status to “active”, and headed off for a long weekend.
New data from Virgin Media O2 has revealed a distinct shift in working habits, with broadband traffic dropping by 8 per cent between 3pm and 5pm on summer Fridays compared to winter levels—suggesting thousands of remote workers are quietly calling time on the week early.
The figures back up what many have suspected: that summer Fridays are increasingly becoming the unofficial start to the weekend, with the garden pub or motorway lay-by replacing the home office.
Virgin’s survey found that 59 per cent of respondents felt no guilt about logging off early, while 61 per cent said they’d earned it after a productive week. Meanwhile, 63 per cent believed they worked harder earlier in the week to justify finishing early on a Friday.
For some, the weekend starts wherever they are. Around 30 per cent of 18–24-year-olds admitted to working from their car while en route to their weekend destination, and 10 per cent said they had taken their laptop to a beer garden. A quarter confessed to often sneaking off early while maintaining a “green” online status.
Britain leads Europe in hybrid working, with 42 per cent of the workforce either fully or partially remote, according to the Office for National Statistics. A separate study from King’s College London (KCL) found that UK workers now work from home for an average of 1.8 days a week—compared to 1.3 days globally.
Some employers are starting to formally embrace the shift, with 30 per cent of companies sanctioning early Friday finishes during the summer.
Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, Associate Professor of Economics at KCL, said: “If some people are logging off at 3pm on a Friday, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it may reflect greater efficiency, better time management, or simply a more balanced work culture. What ultimately matters is whether the work gets done—not whether someone is active on their broadband connection at a particular hour.”
However, not all business leaders are convinced. JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made headlines earlier this year when he told staff: “Don’t give me this shit that work-from-home-Friday works.” The Wall Street bank has since mandated full-time office returns, a move mirrored by Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and Amazon.
UK corporates have responded with their own policies. HSBC will require executives back in the office four days a week from later this year, while Barclays has introduced a three-day minimum. BT and Asda have adopted similar mandates.
Yet research shows a growing resistance among British workers to return full-time. A May 2025 KCL study found that only 42 per cent of workers would comply with a five-day office mandate—down from 54 per cent in 2022. More notably, the proportion of workers willing to switch jobs to avoid a full office return has climbed from 40 per cent to 50 per cent in just three years.
Jeanie York, Chief Technology Officer at Virgin Media O2, said: “Our network traffic analysis is revealing changing workplace habits in real time as the nation takes advantage of long summer Fridays.”
As businesses navigate the post-pandemic workplace, one thing is clear: for many employees, summer Fridays are no longer a perk—they’re becoming an expectation.
