{"id":6066,"date":"2024-07-25T06:53:44","date_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.successories.com\/blog\/?p=6066"},"modified":"2025-07-16T15:27:25","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T19:27:25","slug":"coffee-badging-the-new-trend-that-employers-are-frowning-upon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.successories.com\/blog\/coffee-badging-the-new-trend-that-employers-are-frowning-upon\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Badging – The New Trend that Employers are Frowning upon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with the term we used in the title of this piece, let\u2019s define that before we go any further.  Coffee Badging is one of a slew of new work-related terms to hit the public\u2019s consciousness since we put the pandemic behind us and some companies have begun mandating that their employees spend a certain amount of time at the office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, Coffee Badging describes showing up to the office because the boss says you have to be there three days a week, swiping your badge to show you were there, grabbing a coffee<\/a>, and then going back home to actually start your workday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given that very few office jobs make use of an actual time clock, badge swipes are the substitute, and although it\u2019s entirely possible to track the number of hours between a swipe in and a swipe out, most of the return to work policies drafted so far have only specified the number of days per week that office time is required \u2013 it doesn\u2019t say anything about the number of hours per day that are required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Predictably, employees are taking advantage of this, adhering to the letter of the policy, but probably violating the spirit in which it was intended.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not quite malicious compliance, since there\u2019s no actual malice involved, but it is clear that most employees are interested in holding onto their newfound freedom and flexibility and are doing what they can to accomplish that goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now that we\u2019ve defined what it is, exactly, let\u2019s dig deeper into the two possible futures.  Down one path, Coffee Badging becomes a permanent fixture in the working world.  A trend that\u2019s here to stay.  Down the other, it is slowly ground out of existence by better and more precise return to work (RTO) policies that specify a number of hours per week.  There\u2019s a strong argument to be made for both.  Let\u2019s take a closer look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Coffee Badging Here To Stay<\/strong>?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This argument goes something like this:  Right now, slightly more than a third of American workers do at least some of their work from home.  Pre-pandemic, about a quarter of American workers spent at least part of the week at home, but the pandemic saw that surge to 35%, and the number is likely to increase further over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, working from home is already a permanent fixture on the corporate landscape.  Given that, and given the fact that a growing number of studies indicate that RTO policies don\u2019t actually do anything to boost productivity, and may harm it in some cases (employee resentment), tightening the screws on those policies begins to look like a solution in search of a problem to solve.  That\u2019s not very productive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In addition to that, during the pandemic, legions of employees rediscovered what work\/life balance actually means, and a vanishingly small percentage of them actually want to spend more time in the office.  With some companies using generous work from home policies as an incentive for employment, getting your employees to spend more time in the office is going to be an increasingly hard sell as time goes by.  Is it really worth it?  Probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now let\u2019s look at the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Coffee Badging A Passing Fad<\/strong>?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This view holds that the pandemic was an extraordinary, once a century event that\u2019s not likely to be repeated anytime soon.  Given that, the leeway that employees enjoyed during that event should go away, and there\u2019s a lot of pressure on business owners to enforce that decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, office buildings represent significant fixed (sunk) costs, and if they\u2019re standing mostly empty, that poses some serious challenges to business owners.  What\u2019s the point of having all that office space, after all, if nobody ever bothers to use it?  And if companies are put in the position of all having to sell off their unused capacity, that\u2019s going to crater the market for those properties, which will see most companies taking a loss.  Not a great position to be in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While that doesn\u2019t describe every business owner\u2019s situation, it has proved true often enough to prompt a great many business owners to begin drafting return to office policies, which is what led to the rise of Coffee Badging in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Business owners have tended to take a dim view of this \u201csubjective interpretation\u201d of their policies, and some of them are beginning to respond by building more specificity into them, requiring X number of hours per week, rather than the more open-ended way they were originally written, with Amazon being the most recent to make headlines for that very reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coffee Badging Has Its Place in the Workplace<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While there will undoubtedly be a lot of ebbs and flows as companies experiment with different policies and refinements to existing policies, we feel that working from home is here to stay.  It described a growing segment of the American workforce before the pandemic, and while that event did cause a surge, it didn\u2019t change the underlying fact that we were already headed in that direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For that reason, we feel that most businesses will settle on a hybrid approach with a fairly relaxed posture relating to the specific number of in-office hours that are required, which means that Coffee Badging is likely here to stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With that in mind, why not embrace it?\u00a0 Next time you send care packages<\/a> to your remote or hybrid employees, why not send something that quietly acknowledges that you get it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re not familiar with the term we used in the title of this piece, let\u2019s define that before we go any further.  Coffee Badging is one of a slew of new work-related terms to hit the public\u2019s consciousness since we put the pandemic behind us and some companies have begun mandating that their employees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1043,1042],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-return-to-work","category-work-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nCoffee Badging - The New Trend that Employers are Frowning upon | Successories Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Read the expert article Coffee Badging - The New Trend that Employers are Frowning upon and learn more about employee management and engagement from the Successories Blog\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.successories.com\/blog\/coffee-badging-the-new-trend-that-employers-are-frowning-upon\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coffee Badging - 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