LOUISE GILBERT
Founder & Director
Why Coffee Badging is a sign of bigger problems for business
Lately there has been discussions circulating in organisations about people resorting to “coffee badging.” For those who may not have heard of this, coffee badging refers to the act of employees clocking in for a brief period at the office, typically long enough to grab a coffee, before departing to work from elsewhere.
I’ve recently been asked to respond to a media request on this very issue, and I thought I would be good to share more broadly.
To me, coffee badging is a signal there are deeper issues to be solved in the organisation if this is occurring. Mandates enforced by companies are clearly not working for all employees and they are responding to the mandates through behaviours such as coffee badging.
In my experience people don’t want to resort to these behaviours, but if they’re having to it is showing leaders must work on the systems that are enabling this behaviour. It tells me there’s a real need for leaders to be curious about what’s happening. This means asking their people, “How can we bring out the best in you?”
Importantly, leaders need to be trying to work collaboratively with their people to determine the conditions that enable, not disable their performance, growth and wellbeing. Ultimately, it’s a leader’s role to create these conditions for excellence for people.
The other recommendation I would have to organisations that are seeing this behaviour is to collect data such as in-house hours as an overall trend, which can help organisations intentionally design and optimise their ways of working. So it’s not a bad thing when done responsibly.
This is very different to monitoring individual hours for the purpose of ensuring compliance with mandates, which is extremely problematic.
As organisations continue to experiment with their flexible and hybrid work arrangements, it’s important to take a data driven approach. We also need to factor in the human experience of work and life and the needs of the business strategy.
Coffee badging reminds me of the work from home phenomena where people started to resort to jiggling their mouse, so they appear to be online. If we’re having to use energy on managing our impression and ticking boxes, that energy isn’t available for the actual work.
Monitoring hours tells me there’s a focus on hours and not outcomes and results. A mindset shift is needed here as leaders are stuck in the old ways, and a move to contemporary methods so they can keep up with our new world of work.
If you’re committed to the wellbeing of your teams and supporting your people to grow and perform at their best, my book – Make Work Work for You – is written just for you!
