Albert Goodwin, Contribing LawFuel editor
As lawyers and others push for a return to the office, a trend towards ‘coffee badging’ – the practice of briefly showing up at the physical office, often just long enough to grab a coffee and interact with coworkers, before leaving to complete the rest of the workday remotely.
A recent US study by Resume Builder, showed that 90 percent of US companies plan to implement a return to office policy by the end of 2024 and many law firms are among that group as they see a return to work at least for part of the week.
And aworkplace report from Owl Labs has uncovered an intriguing trend: 58 percent of hybrid workers have engaged in coffee badging.
The same report found that men are more likely to coffee badge than women, with 62 percent of coffee badgers being male compared to 38 percent female.
Coffee badging highlights the tension between the desire for flexible work arrangements and the push by some employers to return to in-person work and do a little more than simply swipe in to the office.
For hybrid employees required to spend a certain number of full days in the office each week, coffee badging allows them to nominally fulfill that obligation while still maximizing their time working from home.
However, it’s a suboptimal solution that still requires commuting time and expense without the full benefits of either in-office collaboration or remote work flexibility.
What Does The Coffee Badging Mean for Workers?
The gender disparity in coffee badging rates raises questions about differing workplace expectations and allowances for men versus women, including for lawyers where different tensions and issues can also be at play.
And there are various explanations around coffee badging, such as saving money, retaining social contacts, protesting work attendance issues and so forth. The ‘fixes’ for coffee badging were outlined in this article.
Prior research has shown men often feel more empowered to negotiate salaries, for instance, suggesting they may also feel more comfortable bending the rules around in-office attendance and indulging in the badging practice.
Have some of the key elements of actually working at the office all day gone?
There will always be some who play games, swiping in and disappearing for the day, but by using technology to monitor their every move is not tolerable.
Generationally, millennials are the most likely to coffee badge, possibly due to differing remote work adoption rates and norms among older and younger cohorts in the company or firm.
Generation Z (those born between the mid 90s and early 2010s) are certainly different to previous generations in terms of their expectations and work attitudes.
Ultimately, maybe, coffee badging may stem from workplace policies that don’t give employees the full flexibility they desire in their work practices.
Offering that flexibility, rather than rewarding brief appearances with free coffee which one study found to be the top office attendance incentive, may render the practice unnecessary.
As law firms and others face the issue of having employees return to work sees something like coffee badging as reflecting the evolving power dynamics between employers and employees in an increasingly hybrid world.
