Is Coffee Badging Bad?

Is 'coffee badging' the new work-life hack or a sign of disengagement? Dive into the debate on hybrid work, trust, and team productivity, and learn how the SIX app can help uncover what's best for your team! 

What is Coffee Badging?

Ever heard of 'coffee badging'? It’s the workplace equivalent of a drive-by wave—just enough face time to say, 'I was here,' before disappearing back into the remote work abyss. Badge in, grab a coffee, hit a couple of meetings, maybe stay through lunch.  But then, maybe not.  A recent CNBC report noted that 44% of employees have admitted to "coffee badging."  Check out this CNBC video about it. 

Is Coffee Badging Good or Bad?  

Like all intriguing questions, the answer is, "it depends."  

Good: My research has shown that empowering employees with autonomy is a concrete demonstration of trust.  Trust, in turn, increases productivity and job satisfaction. Autonomy increases employee "locus of control," the sense that one is in charge of one's life, resulting in a mood boost and reduction in chronic stress.  If employees do not need to be in the office, they are often less distracted when working from home.  And, you avoid that weird guy who always seems to be hanging around the coffeemaker.  Of course, working in stretchy pants is wonderful, but so is avoiding the commute into and back from the office.  Commuting is the number one drag on satisfaction with life, particularly for those with long commutes.  Higher life satisfaction generally translates into higher job satisfaction.  For all these reasons, we have to score one for coffee badging.  

Bad: One of the great benefits of being in the office is random collisions with colleagues.  These may result in the exchange of pleasantries that build colleague trust, fresh ideas on how to address client needs or solve a vexing problem, or simply the joy of being around people you like (irrespective of that coffee room guy).  We are social creatures and our happiness is directly related to the quality of our social interactions.   Team leaders who want to "see" direct reports every day are, in my view, poor managers.  Nearly all of my work has depended on teams of remote colleagues who have clear milestones to meet, are accountable for hitting their goals, and spend time with me in person on a regular schedule.  

If leaders are effectively coaching their teams to succeed, the location—home or office—becomes irrelevant. Take that, Amazon (Amazon directed all employees to return to the office by January 2025).  In support of Amazon’s decision, though–they are a tech company, and collaboration and innovation are easier and faster when meeting in-person where colleagues can see and talk to each other.  This is just how humans function.  Employees with physical or emotional differential abilities should of course be accommodated and home work may work best for them.   Yet, for many businesses, especially those in rapidly evolving industries, in-office work is best.

Boost Productivity Through Autonomy

There are a couple of ways to resolve how to organize your office to have both high productivity but also empower colleagues to control their work lives. With 4 of 10  workers reporting burnout, identifying what works best for your team members is more important than ever. Many businesses now offer people the option of working remotely as well as in the office as they choose or are needed.  Unsurprisingly, the most common in-office days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday according to Korn Ferry.  Two or three days in the office is generally seen as a reasonable schedule.  I like to hold my weekly team meetings on Monday mornings and ask my team, if possible, to attend these in person. Where and when they work the rest of the week is not something I control since people know their own schedules and chronotypes. Hybrid work is actually the norm now in the US.  A May 2024 report from Gallup found that 53% of employees have hybrid schedules, 27% were exclusively remote, and 21% were fully in-office.  

Another Solomonic solution is to reserve dedicated coworking spaces near employees' homes that are closer than the office.  Employees get shorter commutes, work in a relaxed setting, but still get face time with fellow colleagues and others from different businesses.  This reduces mind-numbing commutes while still gaining some of the benefits of seeing one's colleagues in person, and allows for conversations with people likely to have diverse perspectives. And, in many coworking spaces, comfy clothes are the norm.  

Finding the Best Work Environment Strategy for Your Company

How can you determine what is best for you and your organization?

If you ask people, most front-line employees will say remote is best because it’s easy and folks got used to it during the COVID lockdowns.  But, the key question is: Is fully remote work best for employees and the organization?  Immersion's emotional fitness app SIX was designed to answer this question.  Companies that offer SIX as an employee benefit can review anonymized data comparing emotional fitness, which correlates with life satisfaction, on days when the office is full, for example, Wednesdays, to days when it is empty such as Fridays.  Similarly, emotional fitness of employees at coworking spaces can be compared to those working from home and the office.  

SIX empowers employees to see their own data and SIX's AI assistant will offer guidance specific to each individual user on what is best for him or her.  The US Chamber of Commerce reported in December, 2024 that there are eight million open positions in the US.  Giving employees options on where they work, and a tool like SIX to objectively evaluate which option works best for individuals, is critical to sustain an engaged and productive workforce that will continue to work for your organization, rather than some other place, or quitting work altogether.  

The war for talent has long been over and talent has won.  Providing talented and valuable colleagues with SIX is one of the best ways to maintain a growing and profitable business.  Try SIX today for free yourself and find out why this powerful tool could be the most important employee benefit you offer.