A little disengagement from office activity during breaks can allow space for higher productivity while also sparking innovative ideas
Published Date – 14 January 2024, 11:30 PM
By Bhavika Devjani, Dr Moitrayee Das
The days of boring monotonous walls and strict cubicles are long gone. Today, after the revolutionary pandemic, a hybrid workspace isn’t even in the talks; it’s already normalised. To have coffee and chat with fellow workers at the workplace is no big deal, but apparently, coffee badging is. With the start of a new year, we have a new terminology to be added to the corporate lingo — coffee badging.
Paint this picture, it’s a Monday morning. The day is bright and sunny as they always are; or maybe not this appealing to corporate workers. For them, it’s probably back to the day they hit 3 snoozes instead of 7. Like a wave, each employee comes to the office, grabs a coffee, chats a bit with peers and makes a swift run for the exit after just a few minutes at the workplace. This, my dear readers, is the concept of coffee badging.
Tiny Distraction
A staple of corporate life for ages has been a break. Be it a tea/coffee break, a washroom break or a cigarette break. More than satiating cravings, these breaks serve as a means to not only reduce stress but also enhance efficiency and creativity. We are aware of how crudely stressful corporate life can be.
Managing to complete the tasks of these hectic 9-5’s to produce quality work is no easy job. A little disengagement from office activity during breaks or a tiny distraction can allow space for higher productivity while also sparking innovative ideas. Owing to this, reducing stress levels can create a positive work environment that in turn is more encouraging and reduces common burnouts. The need for a break is often mistaken as laziness when it is a rather vital component of work life.
The remote workspace could be compared to a blanket fort in easier terms. But, like all forts, this one can get dusty too, and here is where coffee badging enters the narrative. One does crave the occasional social buzz and a free cappuccino. To satiate these cravings and fulfil the minimum work requirements, employers “transcend” to coffee badgers. Reports have suggested that 58% of hybrid employees have at some point in their work life coffee-badged (Chowdhury, 2023).
Positive Correlation
Fritz et al (2011) found that micro-breaks showed an unanticipated positive correlation between some relief activities and exhaustion. These activities included talking, munching, listening to music, and consuming caffeinated drinks. However, according to the Effort-recovery theory (Meijman & Mulder, 1998), there may be a ‘slow unwinding” after work if there is extended job exposure without symptoms, therefore the time of the break for recovery is critical (Meijman & Mulder, 1998). That is while working long hours without taking breaks, workers may find it harder to relax and recover from the stress of the day since their negative response to the load may last into the evening and interfere with their ability to recover from work (Kim et al, 2016).
The Indian Express reported a couple of conversations with working individuals revealing that they tend to “compare their work-from-home productivity versus the work-from-office productivity. They just go to the office to mark their presence and feel productive by balancing their work and social life at work”. Several employees also addressed the “consistent unsettling feeling of being distracted by the time clock often causes an inability to finish the task”. Reasons for this could be attributed to:
● Rise in hybrid work models: Throughout the long duration of the pandemic, people were forced to switch to working remotely via virtual platforms. With the transition back to normality post the pandemic, most employees realised how easy and comfortable it was to work remotely and preferred that. Now, they rather visit their workplace only when needed and do major work functions from their location of choice.
● Hustle culture: Classically conditioned to always be “on”, employees may feel the need to come to their work just to show their face for a while even if they don’t get work done there; and somewhere else instead. The hustle culture has always focused on physical presence over the actual end product the employee serves. The constant shift from a workplace setting to a home setting is quite exhausting indeed for individuals and leads to stress and burnout (McGovern, 2023). Not to mention, the long commutes are tiring too and can hinder the work mindset (Sharma, 2023).
Some Flaws
Now, with coffee badging entering the chat, it is reasonable enough to conclude that employees were not “having it” with their 9-5 office jobs. Of course, like any other concept, this one has a couple of flaws too. Certain underlying issues of trust among managers and employees may erupt as a result. Teamwork, which is a vital and rather crucial component of office life, is at stake due to the lack of physical connection. The authenticity of teamwork and the results of them physically working might just be compromised.
The way to go forward is not to force conformity to the “one size fits all” regime and rather, to allow employees to choose what kind of setting works best to be productive. Some may prefer working remotely while others may choose to work from the office and being flexible about their choice could indeed pave the way for a positive and more enhanced work environment. In its latest People at Work 2023 A Global Workforce View Report, ADP found that over three out of ten respondents (29%) considered flexibility in work hours to be a major concern, and over one in six (17%) felt that flexibility in workplace location was important (Arora, 2023).
Secondly, a shift in the focus on outcomes rather than the physical presence could produce better outcomes for the company (Desk, 2023). And lastly, managers/bosses communicating freely with their employees and even employees communicating among themselves openly will foster well-being and honesty, and cumulatively manage the majority of issues of remote work (Dababneh, Swanson, and Shell, 2001).
