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October 31, 2024
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The past few years have brought many dizzying trends into the workforce, echoing the madness encompassing life. These trends are making workers and companies reconsider the importance of work-life balance. So, why has engagement flatlined and then dropped exponentially over this time?
Employers seem to go around blaming the latest trend, this time, coffee badging. But what is it, and what does it entail for companies and workers? Read this short article to find out.
In DeskBird’s blog, they discuss the new trend of coffee badging, coined by Owl Labs’ State of Hybrid Work 2023 report. Coffee badging is when employees are made to return to the office even when they don’t want to. This leads to them swiping their badge, chatting a bit with their coworkers, drinking coffee to save face, and leaving as soon as they can.
According to the report, 58% of hybrid workers use this type of interaction when needed in the office, with more men doing this than women, but 8% of workers also want to try it. This rising trend, though, signals that workers want more flexibility out of their jobs, and maybe even that return-to-office mandates aren’t as useful as HR might think. Being at the office does not mean that they’re working.
“You get the best of both worlds: flexibility and physical presence. It’s a clever workaround that lets employees customize their workday to fit their preferences and productivity peaks.”
The article argues that coffee badging can be good, if used correctly. It can help people network while allowing them to throw around ideas in the office before sitting down to work. But it can be bad, especially for those managers who, for some reason or another, can’t seem to motivate their team.
The key to making coffee badging work is to make the office attractive. People don’t stay in places where they are unproductive, feel micromanaged, and have no point in being there. In fact, if the return to office was not planned well enough, many people might just leave the company.
On the other hand, Monica Torres writes a passionate defense for coffee badging in the Huffington Post. She argues that with remote work, employees have become accustomed to flexibility, and going into the office is “a waste of time” when they have to commute to only have video calls.
Torres interviewed an IT project manager who explained that badge swipes are compiled in a report, leading her to feel micromanaged and surveilled. To avoid being questioned, she has decided to diligently go to the office but leave as soon as possible, even though she can do her job fully from home.
“Coffee badging is not an accurate signal of someone’s performance. Busyness is not the same as accomplishment.”
This is part of a larger trend, journalist Hilke Shellmann suggests, as companies want to rely more and more on data without taking the human side into consideration. By caring about badge swipes, they prioritize those who spend more time at the office, without considering valid reasons such as medical leave or caregiving obligations. These last people can be deemed unproductive if they’re not returning to the office long enough, even if they’re hitting all the company’s goals. This has led people to have a lot of anxiety whenever they’re called for a full RTO or hybrid mode.
Archana Bharatan, an executive coach at Columbia Business School, says that reframing coffee badging as something good can be as easy as making sure that office days are well worked. Scheduling in-person meetings instead of online calls or having a particular activity that helps team building can make people more excited to go to the office.
Jessica Dickler argues for CNBC that coffee badging can be defined as the next step of quiet quitting and the Great Detachment. Flatlining engagement has been happening for a while but has accelerated exponentially with the pandemic, and managers haven’t found the cure to bring it back to good health. The flexibility that remote and hybrid work offer is unmatched compared to working at the office.
“Employees have become accustomed to the flexibility of working from home and may only come to the office when absolutely necessary.”
Not only that but because of the new ways in which we work, people are too distracted. This isn’t remedied by going into the office, it’s just that whenever we get an email or a text message, a notification comes in begging for our attention. A study by Unity says 50% of workers are distracted every half an hour and about 25% every 15 minutes. The troubling thing is that getting back into deep concentration takes approximately 20 minutes, meaning that at least 25% of workers are never fully concentrated.
Experts also warn that employees are in the midst of an engagement crisis that companies haven’t properly combated. Research suggests that employees need perks at work that go beyond a coffee machine and more like development opportunities, learning, mentorship, and an upward career path. Coffee badging, the Great Detachment, quiet quitting, and other fear-mongering trends are actually just people missing the forest for the trees.
Coffee badging isn’t just the latest trend but also an evolving symptom of a work culture that has stagnated so much that employees have no choice but to reign back on jumping the latest hurdles if their company isn’t going to have their back. To turn the engagement around, companies must take a long hard look at their employees’ perks, benefits, and recognition programs, as well as the necessity of a return to office and hybrid mode to make sure that their workers are happy, engaged, and growing professionally.
Contributed by Ana Martinez
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