Thursday is the new Friday for Shore-goers as hybrid arrangements keep work-from-beach days alive

For Elise Corbett, summer weekends used to start on Friday evening, when she signed off from work, hopped in the car, and made the drive down traffic-packed highways to Sea Isle City, where she and a few friends rented a house together.

On Sunday nights, they would all set their alarms for 4:30 a.m. the next day, so they could make the trek back to their office jobs for another week of work.

That was before the pandemic.

Corbett, 28, a communications professional who lives in South Philadelphia, now goes to the Jersey Shore about one weekend a month, staying at her parents’ place in Brigantine. But she leaves on Thursday night, with plans to work remotely on Friday.

“Usually I’m on until at least 5 [p.m.], but either way it’s still nice working at the Shore,” Corbett said. “It’s nice being able to go for a lunch walk on the beach instead of a hot city sidewalk, or being able to shut down and go to the beach right away while there’s still a couple hours of sunlight.”

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In the Philadelphia business community, it seems hybrid work arrangements are here to stay. So, too, is the longer weekend escape to nearby sandy retreats.

“Thursdays all of a sudden became like Fridays” during the pandemic, said Evelyn Mars, executive director of the Jersey Shore Chamber of Commerce. Traffic is now heavier on Mondays as well, she said.

Even with more people spending time in their offices in 2023 than they had in the previous three years, Shore-goers and locals expect beach lovers to continue tacking on an extra day or two at the beach, cracking open their laptops and taking some video calls.

“People have become a little more accepting of different things,” said Danielle Wolowitz, who runs multiple businesses on the Jersey Shore. “It’s not such a formal atmosphere even in the corporate environment.”

Three years ago, when most office workers were under strict orders to stay away from their offices due to COVID’s social-distancing mandates, many retreated to the beach for longer stretches, even if it meant working remotely from a Shore town.

Some even moved in permanently, creating a surge in beach home sales and a rush of demand to Shore businesses.

In the last year, an increasing number of businesses have told office workers to come back to their workplaces at least a few days a week. Philadelphia’s office district has seen more foot traffic by nonresident workers in 2023 than it has since March 2020, when COVID-19 shutdowns began, according to a recent Center City District report.

But that hasn’t caused a mass exodus from the Jersey Shore, local business leaders said.

“I see there’s some people going back into New York and Philadelphia for work, but it’s not dramatic,” said Pat Mayer, a Monmouth County Realtor.

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Center City stakeholders have suggested that the amount of in-office workdays will continue to increase, but that may not mean the end of long weekends at the Shore.

Recent data from Kastle Systems, which tracks how many people are swiping into office buildings, found that Philadelphia offices were at less than 42% occupancy in mid-May, on average.

Office attendance in all of the biggest U.S. cities has been particularly sparse on Fridays, which was already the lowest-occupancy day of the week in February 2020, but now the difference is stark. In Philadelphia, Friday occupancy was less than 30% the week of May 10.

A lot of companies are still in the midst of negotiating what works best for their teams, said Michael O’Bryan, founder of organizational design strategy firm Humanature. Most of those doing so successfully have landed on some kind of hybrid model, he said, and an “all-or-nothing” approach is unlikely to work.

“A lot of people are resisting going back to what feels like arbitrary requirements,” O’Bryan said. “One of the things a human never wants to feel is powerless.”

While work-from-beach arrangements don’t seem to be disappearing, they are evolving as professionals refine their habits to make it sustainable.

Corbett was spending more time in Brigantine in 2021 than she does now. She eventually stopped spending midweek days there.

“If you start to feel like your work is bleeding a little too much into your sacred beach time, do what you need to do,” she advised. “Go back into the office, only come down on Fridays.”

Hanna Garrity of South Philadelphia, a recruiter in the technology industry, goes to Bethany Beach, Del., about two weekends a month. Garrity, 33, works fully remote, and her partner is on a hybrid schedule, so they typically go from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon.

“At times I think it’s hard to stay focused on Friday [because] you’re excited for the weekend,” Garrity said. So she makes sure to fill her calendar with meetings instead of planning “heads-down focus time.”

“Talking to a lot of people and having very open conversations, more casual even, … that seems to work pretty well for me” at the beach, she said.

Mark Evangelista, 56, a client manager for Lexis Nexis from West Chester, is fully remote in his work, but it wasn’t until the pandemic started that he became more willing to work from a vacation spot.

He does a few long weekends in Avalon each year, and a couple of weeks at Cape Cod in Massachusetts. To make it possible, Evangelista said, discipline is key.

“If you want to take an hour lunch, just make sure you’re back at the computer or phone after an hour,” he said.

Danielle Wolowitz, who owns a business services company and a doughnut shop in Monmouth County, has been watching these changes through her customers at both companies.

At the business services company, she’s noticed clients who want workers back in the office are often providing flexibility in other ways, like granting more vacation time. She predicts that hybrid working from the beach will decline because more people are going to simply take their vacation days.

At the doughnut shop, she’s noticed a similar number of people in the dining room, but not as many sitting there on their computers. People aren’t going to the beach for a change of scenery while they work, but in an effort to truly rest.

“We all worked too many hours. This idea of remote [work] made us too accessible,” Wolowitz said. “I would like to think that now if you’re coming to vacation here, … you’re truly doing it as a vacation and you are trying to disconnect from work.”