Posted on 12/18/2023 4:45:08 AM PST by bert
In post-pandemic times, many employers and companies are continuing to mandate a return to the office for their workers — and some employees are responding with a particular form of pushback.
First, there was the trend "quiet quitting," in which workers did the bare minimum on the job just to get by — and now, say workplace leaders and experts, there’s "coffee badging," another form of employee protest.
What is ‘coffee badging’? As some employees are being called back to the office, many are subtly protesting by returning to the office for as little time as possible, Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs in Boston, told FOX Business.
"Coffee badging is when employees show up to the office for enough time to have a cup of coffee, show their face and get a ‘badge swipe' — then go home to do the rest of their work," said Weishaupt.
His firm, Owl Labs, which makes 360° video conferencing devices, did a deep dive into the trend's data.
"Our 2023 State of Hybrid Work report found that only about 1 in 5 workers (22%) want to be in the office full time, with 37% wanting hybrid work options and 41% preferring to be fully remote," said Weishaupt.
More than half (58%) of hybrid workers are "coffee badging," a study found.
Further, he said the Owl Labs study found that more than half (58%) of hybrid workers are "coffee badging," while another 8% said they haven't done it yet but would like to try it.
How are workers getting away with ‘coffee badging’? People at all levels of companies and organizations are busy with their own jobs, so they don’t have time to keep tabs on everyone else’s whereabouts, said Weishaupt.
"If a coffee badger doesn’t have any in-person meetings or a desk near the boss, the person might not be missed," he said.
"Our data shows that about two-thirds of managers (64%) have ‘coffee badged’ themselves, with another 6% who want to try it," he also said.
"Less than a third of managers (30%) want to go to the office for the full day."
Why is the trend emerging now? Niki Jorgensen, managing director of client implementation with Insperity in Denver, told FOX Business that several months ago, coffee badging began making news as the latest work trend.
"Coffee badging is simply the latest example of the challenges businesses are facing with transitioning employees back to the office after the pandemic," she said.
How can firms address this? It's important for each business to do its own research into coffee badging, Jorgensen suggested.
"There is no need to panic over coffee banging, yet if a business finds most of its employees are coffee badging, that could reflect the need to reevaluate their organization's culture and work-from-home policies," she told FOX Business.
Often, but not always, coffee badging is a reflection of employee dissatisfaction with an organization’s culture or hybrid policies, said Jorgensen.
"Coffee badging can seem disrespectful or even insubordinate to business leaders who expect their employees to spend a full day in the office," she said.
Yet "it's important to understand that the motivations for coffee badging are rarely ill-intentioned," she clarified.
Three fixes to consider Company managers may want to focus on a few strategies to halt coffee badging among employees, Jorgensen said.
Implement flex hours. "To encourage employees to spend more time at the office, consider flex hours so they can come in an hour earlier or later," she said. Encourage employees to get together. Employees want to socialize with one another, said Jorgensen. Given this, "leaders can create opportunities for employees to socialize by planning events over lunch or immediately after hours," she said. Embrace open communication. Coffee badging can be a symptom of overworked, burned out and disengaged employees, Jorgensen suggested. "To combat it, invite employees to speak up about their experience in the workplace and share solutions to help them balance their work and personal lives more easily," she said.
"When workers only come into the office briefly and then leave, they are not spending as much time interacting face to face," she told FOX Business.
"Over time, this can undermine relationship-building and reduce collaboration."
Emily Ballesteros, founder of Burnout Management, LLC, in Seattle and author of the upcoming book, "The Cure for Burnout: How to Find Balance and Reclaim Your Life" (Feb. 2024), told FOX Business that a downside to the coffee badging trend is that it creates unpredictability that can impact others.
"Where there is unrest, there is usually a need to be met."
"Trying to schedule meetings when you're unsure of who is virtual or in-person; planning around commutes to and from the office; needing clarification on whether a meeting is virtual or in-person, etc. — all of this adds a bit more unpredictability to the workday that can cause frustration," Ballesteros said.
To reduce unpredictability, many companies are introducing hybrid schedules.
"They have seen on surveys that their employees would like the flexibility to work from home sometimes," she said.
"So rather than have constant flux and unpredictability around who is where, they create a schedule that meets people in the middle, such as saying that everyone works from home Monday and Friday and everyone is in the office Tuesday-Thursday," noted Ballesteros.
"Where there is unrest, there is usually a need to be met."
I think George Costanza perfected this.
Certain jobs don’t lend themselves to remote work, I spent the better part of 38 years in the IT world, the last approximately 15 years working remotely, even though I had the option of going to the office.
The overwhelming majority of the Engineers on the team I was on would work from home 80% of the time, we would meet at the office maybe 1 day per week to BS and go to lunch together and discuss any issues we had with the conversion projects we were working on and take conference calls with teammates that were spread out around the country, since the job required significant travel around the country often times we would not see teammates for a few months at a time.
Once you get used to working remotely it’s hard to give it up, especially if your commute is in traffic both ways to/from work. People also have a tendency to stop by your cubicle or office to BS and it wastes a lot of time each day, where as for me working from home I would work off hours get more work done in a shorter amount of time.
I think if this is going to be the new trend, there needs to be better ways to monitor daily productivity. Such as using Agile methodologies to gauge how much work a team member has to do and a length of time to accomplish the work. I have been 100% remote for the last seven years and I can tell you from experience, as both a manager and team member that unless clear goals are identified and how and when the work will get done documented, you could very well do the minimum work required and spend the rest of your tie screwing off.
“I think George Costanza perfected this.”
He also lived with his parents. In Queens.
“quiet quitting,” in which workers did the bare minimum on the job just to get by”
Hell, that’s nothing new. I worked around people like that for 40 years! Lol!
“quiet quitting,” in which workers did the bare minimum on the job just to get by”
Hell, that’s nothing new. I worked around people like that for 40 years! Lol!
“coffee badging”?...lazy, sneaking, unproductive employees?
“Employees want to socialize with one another”
For men, not so much since the #metoo thing started. Many men have refrained from having any personal interactions with female co-workers. It’s strictly business now.
The people who way way way overreacted to Covid and made everyone stay home so Trump would lose the election, had no idea that it would have the side effect of destroying the economies of major cities as people got used to ‘working from home....which is a joke. No one works from home. Even thats a joke. It’s better to just call it what it is....not working from home.
I agree with you, although you will be attacked by many Freepers here that have rationalized they are actually more productive when working from home. I estimate that 80% of work from home employees are doing the absolute minimum.
Scott Adams built a Dilbert character, Wally, around it!
*No one* works from home? What do you base that on?
How about the people who run businesses from their house...do they not work from home either?
Anybody who doesn’t want to escape rush hour traffic and all of its endless hassles is clinically insane.
Bingo.
There’s a simple solution to this.
Make employees swipe in AND swipe out when they leave.
Estimate based on what?
Anyone who isn't productive remotely wasn't productive in the office.
As for being more productive, we have have fewer staff despite hiring more from distant locations, with more skills, doing far more than previously.
There is no "back to the office" for staff who live several states away. The remote ones have far more skills than the locals.
We have staff doing more work than ever before, some at a ratio of 1:2 where one person is now doing the work of two people.
In before the: “They’re all just lazy! Fire everybody! Why...all employees are interchangeable cogs in the machine and you could replace them all just by snapping your fingers!” crowd.
The reality is a LOT of people can do their work at home - as they did for a year and a half to 3 years now in my case - and don’t want to undergo the hassle of commuting, paying to park, paying for lunch, paying for daycare or doggy daycare or other expenses so that they can be in a cube farm that is loud and full of interruptions. There is no real evidence that most people are more productive coming into the office. Its just that bosses have started pushing for it due to political pressure and the loss of the ability to micromanage nearly as effectively. Some bad managers want to stand over your shoulder and order you around like a 3rd grader and they keenly feel the loss when they no longer have that power.
No doubt the Leftist control freaks in HR don’t like their massive loss of power when lots of people they want to target (ie White Men) are not at the office and thus not vulnerable to any BS claims against them.
Why risk your livelihood for even an innocuous compliment?
I personally found agile methodology wastes more time and results in poorly built systems. A systems engineer in a major software company said they use agile to get something in the hands of their users, but then they turn around and build it the right way to have a well designed product.
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