Helping Coffee Badgers Buy
A lot of talk around changing workplace trends is of the where.
Fevered debate around mandated days in the office, hybrid boundaries and WFA distance.
Mixing varying levels of presence flexibility is one thing.
Now it appears such flexibility reaches the when.
Building on classic work/life balance tropes. For general wellbeing benefits, reducing the often considerable drag of hellish commutes, and all hail the mystique of higher productivity.
The freshly minted term of note is 'coffee-badging'.
AKA, 'showing face at the office and then leaving'.
Coverage now wider-spread thanks to pr of a company with skin in the game. Namely video meeting tech innovator, Owl Labs.
They claim to have found that of workers identifying as hybrid (they say currently a quarter of all workers) an astonishing 58pc are engaged in this practice. A further 8pc imminently set to swell their ranks. That'll total two out of three of those already doing hybrid.
Specifically, office attendance (on days it does happen) eschews the traditional morning rush-hour, beginning rather around Elevenses. Hence the coffee label. You rock up, grab your coffee, get a badge for it, and join in.
Until that is, leaving early to swerve the exit jams. Although, it must be said, some do stay 'til after it abates. Oh the memories of those shared clocked-off pints back in the day. When it probably won't surprise you to know, much of the big hitting thought actually took shape.
Perhaps as expected, the chief exec of the surveyor adds that 'office attendance monitoring is a trust killer'. Suggesting personal hybrid preferences are malleable. Whilst not every knowledge role suits the remote-first or blended ethos, there is a vital switch we can flick here with our selling.
Regardless of where we might be working from, what about our prospects?
How many of them are coffee badgers?
And of those that are, how do they prefer to do business their end?
It's a dangerously overlooked view.
Imagine they use office days solely for their manager's whims. Would they want a call, let alone visit, on such days?
Consider if they'd like to get a day off to a positive, stimulating start. Perhaps while waiting for the traffic to subside or cheaper rate train fare to kick in. Surely you could fit that bill early doors.
Picture if they'd like to be seen to be progressing something, particularly that you can offer an interesting path ahead for. And at the least can register a calendar slot over video (whether they in- or out- of office).
Video might well not be the optimum way to hold every one of these conversations. But when it is, you owe it to yourself and your 'badger to make it that way.
Wouldn't you want to be in tune with as many as one-in-five of the overall workforce? The key is simply making the effort to match with the where, when and how.