The term describes those who show up at the office just long enough to be counted as present, before leaving to work elsewhere
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Your employer said you had to show up at the office. But they never said you had to stay there. That’s the ethos behind coffee badging, the latest buzzword(s) used to describe workers who don’t want to work in the traditional way.
What is coffee badging?
It’s the practice of showing up at your workplace just long enough to swipe your badge and prove you were there, and maybe grab a coffee with a colleague or take a quick meeting. After that, you leave the workplace and spend the rest of the day working from home, or a coffee shop, or wherever you choose.
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Where did the term originate?
Owl Labs, a Boston-based company that specializes in remote work solutions, released its State of Hybrid Work report for 2023 and reported that one of the new trends was “coffee badging,” which it described as “the act of going into the office to ‘show face’ for a few hours and then leaving.”
The survey found that more than half of hybrid employees (58 per cent) had engaged in the practice, with another 8 per cent saying they haven’t but would like to try it.
The survey also found that 66 per cent of respondents said they were in the office full-time, but only 22 per cent wanted to be. Clearly something had to give, and coffee badging was it.
Who are the coffee badgers?
The report found that the majority of coffee badgers — 62 per cent — were men, and that millennials were most likely to do it — 63 per cent of millennials said so, compared to 42 per cent of Gen Z, 54 per cent of Gen X and 38 per cent of Boomers. The website Tech.co suggested this might be due to men feeling more entitled, and to older generations being more used to office jobs, while the youngest workers weren’t established enough to feel they could slip away.
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Is it useful?
Yes and no. If you’re required to log in at work and really don’t want to be there, coffee badging can let you be more productive than if you were tied to your desk all day. Plus, heading home at 2 p.m. (or noon, or 9:30…) means you can avoid rush hour.
On the other hand, it’s flouting the rules rather than working to change them. As business website Raconteur put it: “Whether you are for or against remote work, it’s hard not to see coffee-badging as an inefficiency. Employees who choose to do so are effectively working from home, but still wasting time and money commuting. It also demonstrates a deep lack of trust and perhaps even scorn for company rules.”
How to make it work for you
“Try to reframe the coffee badging so that you feel that you’re making the most of this situation,” said Archana Bharathan, an executive coach at Columbia Business School. Her comments were in an article at HuffPost.com entitled “In Defense Of Coffee Badgering, The Controversial New Office Trend,” suggesting that someone wrote this piece while away from the office.
“If you have the flexibility of choosing which three days you need to be in, figure out … how you can potentially combine your commute with other things that require attention in your personal life, (like) if you need to run errands,” she said.
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How can you stop it?
As an employer, that may not be easy. People will always find ways to skirt the rules, as recent buzzwords like quiet quitting, quiet vacationing and hush trips have proven. But also, if people are seeing the need to avoid returning to work, it may signal either that it’s not really necessary, or that the necessity hasn’t been communicated well.
And here’s an unusual strategy — free coffee. Another poll last year found that providing free drinks was the best way to convince people to return to the office, with coffee singled out by two thirds of those polled.
Granted, the survey was commissioned by Flavia, which markets hot beverage systems. And it would also seem to play right in coffee badgers’ hands. Maybe chain the mug to the desk?
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