Is this the best time to leave the office?

When do you think it is a good time to leave the office on a Friday night? After all, if the sun is shining and you’ve got a nice weekend planned it would be good to be able to finish at a reasonable time.

In some jobs though there can be pressure to finish projects which legitimately means that you’ll have to stay late to meet the deadline.

In other companies though there can be a culture of staying late as there’s “always something to do” and never enough time to do it all or there can be pressure to stay late to “prove” that you are busy and working hard.

As an aside, when I was younger I used to work with a colleague who would bring in a spare jacket to leave on the back of his chair when he left the office at the end of the day – his boss would see the jacket on the chair together with an open file on the desk and the screensaver active on his computer and think he was still working hard and in a meeting somewhere else in the office.

Back to 2016 though and Credit Suisse, the leading investment bank, has introduced a new policy called “protecting Friday nights”.

In an email leaked to Reuters, Credit Suisse said it would be ordering all employees to stop working at 7pm on Fridays.

Marisa Drew, co-head of banking and capital markets in London reportedly told workers that she “had given a great deal of thought into how we can provide some time off for our bankers”. Ms Drew went on to say that this would allow “employees to make firm plans with family and friends and ensure that this time will be respected”.

So, good news for Credit Suisse employees as (unless they are working on a deal) they have to leave the office by 7pm on Friday.

When do they have to be back in the office though? Well, they have been told that they cannot go back to the office until midday on Saturday.

Yes, a whole 17 hours to relax, see the family and get some sleep…