By the time you read this, your New Year's resolutions may no longer be foremost in your mind. Perhaps they've quietly fallen by the wayside - or perhaps they imploded in a puff of wheatgrass-smoothie-fuelled smoke at some point last week. You may have spent the first week of January declaring that this year you'd practise the saxophone for three hours every day, only eat hand-stroked vegetables grown in the Outer Hebrides, or never argue with your teenage offspring ever again about the levels of hygiene observed in their bedrooms. All admirable goals, of course. But the honest truth is that not all changes can dovetail well with real life in 2025. Sometimes, we come to realise that we've built our lives in such a way that it's not practical - or desirable - to unwind the social and professional structures we've collectively put in place.
And so it may be with the return to the office. You've probably seen quite a lot of discussion over the last few months about companies recalling their teams to the office full time. But it's important to consider the reality behind those headline figures. Is it genuinely the case that all of our working hours are now going to be spent in offices and meeting rooms? Or in fact, are employees across the globe silently protesting against what they see as a counter-productive policy?
The new concept of "coffee badging" might suggest that workers are pushing back and continuing to work in the way they think is most efficient - even when that conflicts with their official instructions. It's not a very catchy phrase, I'll grant you. It might summon up images of solitary black and white woodland creatures more readily than thoughts of autonomous professionals with sleek laptops. But coffee badging is the latest HR buzzword. It refers to the practice of swiping in at your office, grabbing a coffee and having a chat with your colleagues, thus technically meeting your employer's requirement for you "to attend the office"... and then leaving and actually getting your work done from home for the rest of the working day. You've received your attendance "badge" for the day, even warmed up with a hot drink, and now it's time to knuckle down to the business of actually getting your work done - somewhere else. This might sound astonishingly like hard work to those of us who live in traffic clogged cities, where the business of attending the office is likely to entail a 2 hour round-trip. But perhaps that's why the trend is proving so popular - it's been suggested that it's partly a form of protest against the pointlessness of forcing workers to spend time and money on a commute which they believe will make it much harder for them to carry out their jobs effectively. And it's more widespread than a vanilla latte - a 2024 study by Owl Labs concluded that an astonishing 39% of UK workers work this way.
It's a pretty audacious move, but we wonder whether it's a reflection of the changes we've seen in offices across the UK in the last few years. Now that many organisations have down-sized, workers report being frustrated by the need to spend the first half hour of any business day wandering the various floors of their company's premises, trying to find a free desk. Whilst the return to the office was hailed by some as a move that would improve professional relationships, it's hard to see how that might be achieved by sitting next to a different person each day in a large, hot-desking workplace. Some note that their teams no longer work in the same location as them, so that they're travelling to a city-centre location only to engage in the same online meetings they could have joined at home. Others point out that, in a world where almost all professional interactions are carried out virtually, their offices are filled with increasingly-irate colleagues trying to make themselves heard over the Teams call taking place at the next desk. The alternative - rows of colleagues each wearing headphones, immersed in separate meetings, each in their own digital world - seems to run contrary to the idea that office working improves team spirit. We can't help but wonder what the knock-on effects are going to be in the modern workplace. There've been many grand statements from global CEOs about how a return to in-person working will boost collaboration. But if, in practice, we all find that such corporate slogans are echoing through a workplace of empty desks at 4pm, we may feel that trouble is brewing. Actions speak louder than words, after all. It seems increasingly clear that as we roll into 2025, the real collaboration is taking place online - with co-workers in other parts of the world, and with clients who are still working remotely.
Does this really matter? Perhaps it's just taking a little while for workers to get used to the new arrangements? Sadly, we think that coffee badging - a clanging red alarm bell of employee discontent - suggests the issue is bigger than just a run-of-the-mill acclimatisation period. Perhaps we should be noticing a change in the atmosphere of our workplaces - as chilly a change as walking out of a warm, aromatic coffee shop into the freezing January air. Because even if we disregard for a moment the human element, a policy which forces unwilling team members back into crowded and stressful cities, leaving them feeling unhappy, ignored and undervalued, may be an expensive one. Ultimately, most of our businesses rise and fall according to the skill and expertise of our people. If our employees are giving us clear messages that they're dissatisfied, and we respond only with a corporate shrug, then they will almost inevitably vote with their feet, in the short or medium term. And it takes time, management effort and sometimes a significant amount of money to find the best new talent - not to mention that the best talent on the market may be a little shy about making the move to an organisation which is reluctant to be flexible. If a competitor can offer the most desirable candidates more appealing working arrangements, then how will that affect our ability to attract and retain good people, and, in turn, affect the success of our businesses?
In the end, the costs of providing some cappuccinos may be fairly minimal. The costs of sticking our heads in the sand - if we don't wake up and smell the coffee in time to save our teams from dispersing - could be much greater.