Coffee badging is the practice of going into the office just long enough to grab a coffee, say hello to work friends and colleagues, and then leave. It’s an ignoble practice at first glance, but when you think about it, these coffee badgers might be onto something.
Adrian Volenik of Yahoo Finance wrote about coffee badging in a recent post: “For employees, coffee badging is about finding balance. The daily commute, office distractions, and rigid schedules can feel unnecessary when remote work has already proven to be highly productive for many. Coffee badging allows workers to meet their employers’ requirements while preserving their preferred work environment.”
Is Commuting Worth It When You Mostly Work Independently?
For many employees, including myself, work is largely not collaborative, but solitary. That means undertaking a sometimes-lengthy commute just to sit mostly alone at your desk in the office. You could just as easily stumble out of bed and stroll to your desk or kitchen table and accomplish the exact same work.
The Greatest Benefit of In-Person Work
The benefit of the in-person office, then, becomes the social aspects, or the coffee time. You can’t replicate at home grabbing a coffee, tea, hot chocolate, etc., with work friends and colleagues to shoot the breeze. Those informal gatherings have value. Unplanned idea generation and discussion of possible solutions to challenges frequently arise during these gatherings.
The famous scenario of the idea sketched out on a napkin is a real thing. In recent years, most of my interactions with the full team of people I work with are while traveling for business. Last year, during one of those trips, we found ourselves looking for a napkin to jot down the outlines for a new series of videos that would appear on our site. This year, that series is coming to fruition.
Analyze How Your In-Person Space Is Being Used
Like any tendency among employees, organizations may fare better optimizing it rather than trying to fight it. You may want to consider how your in-person office space is being used. For employees whose work is truly collaborative, with most of their day spent in meetings, an in-person work routine makes sense and is beneficial.
But how about for employees, like me, who mostly work independently? Does an in-person work routine still make sense, other than for ensuring the organization fulfills its requirement for in-person attendance to get the tax break that was offered with the office-space lease?
To make the most of coffee badging, don’t make employees do it surreptitiously. During annual performance reviews, gather information about what employees’ days are like when they are in-person in the office, including, on average, how many in-person meetings they have. Also ask what they typically have accomplished at the end of a day in the office. Then, ask the same questions about a day working at home. If an honest analysis of the information gathered shows there is little value in the completion of work in-person, consider the other benefits the employee could get out of the office.
Formalize Coffee Badging
The social interaction benefits of in-person office life are often huge. Rather than having employees swipe their access card to get credit for coming in and then leaving after an hour, organize a social gathering among colleagues once a week. The invitation could openly call the gathering “coffee with work friends” and should be slotted for an hour with employees asked to free up to an additional hour after that initial hour in case an idea or thought is brought up during the meeting that requires immediate work or an additional meeting directly afterwards.
Like a formal meeting, the manager should take down notes on substantive ideas or gripes that are discussed, and then take actions to create assignments or find solutions related to those topics.
If no substantive idea arises at all, that’s OK. The time spent shooting the breeze with colleagues has value in and of itself. It increases the familiarity among co-workers, making everyone more comfortable with each other. That genuine friendliness makes it easier to approach team members with new ideas, or to ask for additional work on a department project.
Acknowledging how in-person work environments are truly the most valuable allows organizations to ensure they are optimizing these spaces to their fullest extent.
How do your employees use your in-person workspaces? Have you considered what work is best suited for remote settings, and the most important functions of the in-person office?