Are you a “espresso badger”? You realize the kind, the colleague who reveals up on the workplace simply lengthy sufficient to be seen—usually to swipe their badge, greet colleagues, seize a espresso … after which sneak out in some unspecified time in the future to maintain working remotely, the best way hundreds of thousands have for years now.
This new buzzword is stirring anxiousness in boardrooms, as “espresso badging” reveals that what began as a cheeky work-around to return-to-office mandates post-COVID has develop into a big problem for firms grappling with the altering guidelines of office engagement.
The scope of the issue
Latest surveys present that espresso badging shouldn’t be a fringe conduct: It’s now practiced by a staggering portion of the workforce. In accordance with information from a number of sources, 44% of hybrid staff within the U.S. acknowledge espresso badging, and greater than 58% of respondents in a survey of two,000 American staff admit to having finished it a minimum of as soon as. However the situation isn’t confined to a small phase of multinationals or tech staff. The truth is, three out of each 4 firms—75%—report scuffling with staff espresso badging, making it a widespread concern throughout industries and firm sizes.
Enterprise Insider just lately delivered a scoop that espresso badging has gotten so dangerous at Samsung’s U.S. semiconductor division that it explicitly scolded staff about it and rolled out an RTO (return-to-office) monitoring device. Whereas celebrating that “extra smiling faces might be seen within the hallways,” Samsung introduced its new “compliance device for Individuals Managers” will “be sure that workforce members are fulfilling their expectation relating to in-office work—nevertheless that’s outlined with their enterprise chief—in addition to guarding towards cases of lunch/espresso badging.”
Samsung’s transfer adopted a coffee-badging crackdown at Amazon. It has gotten so dangerous there that managers are having one-on-one conversations with staff about what number of hours they’re actually returning to the workplace. “Now that it’s been greater than a yr, we’re beginning to communicate straight with staff who haven’t often been spending significant quantities of time within the workplace to make sure they perceive the significance of spending high quality time with their colleagues,” Amazon beforehand mentioned in a press release to Fortune.
Why are so many firms struggling?
Return-to-office mandates had been supposed to revive normalcy and increase productiveness. As an alternative, they’ve triggered a silent revolt.
Workers—particularly millennials—are leveraging hybrid insurance policies of their favor, discovering the least disruptive solution to comply, whereas minimizing commute and workplace time.
One examine discovered that even 47% of managers admitted to espresso badging themselves, underscoring how deeply this conduct is ingrained throughout hierarchies. That’s truly increased than the variety of particular person contributors (34%) who’re java swiping.
How firms reply
Confronted with a widespread and hard-to-measure pattern, firms are experimenting with every thing from stricter monitoring to radically new incentives. First is, merely, monitoring badge swipes: Gartner reported that 60% of firms had been monitoring staff as of 2022, greater than doubling for the reason that starting of the pandemic and solely larger in magnitude since. Others, like Amazon, now require a minimal variety of work hours in-office, not only a badge swipe.
A minority are shifting from hours-based to results-based evaluations, hoping to spice up genuine workplace engagement. Others court docket staff with improved facilities and larger schedule autonomy, aiming to make workplace time extra interesting than obligatory. Nonetheless, leaders fear that espresso badging alerts deeper disengagement—and that one-size-fits-all RTO methods are backfiring.
Trying forward
Espresso badging isn’t just about staff skirting insurance policies; it’s a symptom of a deeper disconnect between conventional office expectations and the realities of white-collar work in 2025. So long as staff might be productive remotely—and examine in-person time as a performative hoop—firms might want to rethink the worth proposition of the workplace, not simply the enforcement.
With nearly all of firms reporting struggles and almost half of hybrid staff participating within the apply, espresso badging isn’t going away quickly. Relatively than combating it with stricter guidelines, organizations might have to hearken to what it reveals about worker motivation, engagement, and the way forward for work tradition itself.
Are you a espresso badger? Do you have got them in your workforce, or know of others who swipe out and in after a quick look? We’d love to listen to from you. Get in contact at nick.lichtenberg@guide.fortune.com.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to assist with an preliminary draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the data earlier than publishing.
