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July 26, 2024
Should Amazon Be Cracking Down on ‘Coffee Badgers’?
Amazon has instituted new return-to-office policies to reduce “coffee badging,” or the practice of hybrid employees coming into the office building to badge in and grab their morning coffee before going home to work for the remainder of the day.
According to leaked Slack messages attained by Business Insider, retail, cloud computing, and other Amazon teams were recently told that a minimum of two hours per visit is required to count as office attendance. Some department teams are being required to stay six hours.
The moves come as many Amazon workers had already protested the company’s move in May 2023 to require office attendance for most corporate staffers three times a week after allowing remote work when the pandemic arrived.
“Over a year ago we asked employees to start coming into the office three or more days per week because we believe it would yield the best long-term results for our customers, business, and culture. And it has,” Amazon spokesperson Margaret Callahan told Entrepreneur in an emailed statement. “Now that it’s been more than a year, we’re starting to speak directly with employees who haven’t regularly been spending meaningful amounts of time in the office to ensure they understand the importance of spending quality time with their colleagues.”
Roughly 30,000 Amazon employees had signed a petition against mandated office attendance last March, but Amazon quickly rejected the effort. By the fall, Amazon began telling employees that not showing up three days a week could lead to being fired or losing a chance at a promotion.
The leaked Slack messages, according to Business Insider, showed that many workers see the hourly mandates to be “unreasonably stringent” with some questioning their legality. One worker suggested people will naturally rebel “if you treat employees like high school students.”
Others sought more data on why such policies were beneficial. One employee wrote on Slack, “Remember when we were measured on metrics that actually mattered?”
Amazon is not alone in seeking to track workers’ office attendance, with reports arriving in fall 2022 that corporations were shifting back to encouraging in-person work. A Wall Street Journal article last fall indicated that Facebook-parent Meta Platforms, Google, JPMorgan Chase, and TikTok-parent ByteDance were among those requiring workers to document their whereabouts and employing technologies to monitor their attendance.
The WSJ stated, “Companies generally have wide legal latitude to monitor workers, and some are turning to more granular sources of data such as IP address information transmitted via Wi-Fi, ceiling-mounted heat sensors and weight-triggered sensors attached to chairs that can track workplace occupancy levels.”
A recent survey by LinkedIn News showed that 19% of workers are still coffee badging, with another 31% having done so in the past.
The jury still seems to be out on whether fully remote, hybrid, or fully on-site corporate workforces are optimal. According to Owl Labs’ State of Hybrid Work 2023, 60% of hybrid workers think they’re more productive when they work from home, while 30% believe they’re at the same level of productivity working from home. Among hybrid workers surveyed, 38% said an office setting is best for meeting new people, while 30% said it is best for meetings, and another 28% said they prefer an office setting when collaborating with others.
According to the Flex Index, launched by work management startup Scoop, the activities that attracted employees the most to the office were teamwork (32.4%) socializing (27.5%), and managing/mentoring (9.5%). Ranking lower were creativity (6.4%), team meetings (5.7%), knowledge (5.7%), client meetings (4.6%), and productivity (4%).
Discussion Questions
Are you for or against minimum-hour obligations for days when hybrid corporate employees are in office?
Are you okay with technologies being used to monitor employee attendance?
What’s your overall advice on return-to-work policies?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Kai Clarke
CEO, President- American Retail Consultants
Dick Seesel
Principal, Retailing In Focus LLC
Nicola Kinsella
SVP Global Marketing, Fluent Commerce
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There are benefits to working from an office. There are also benefits to working from home. It is not black and white. I think the best way to assess performance in this new era of hybrid working is to look at output and contribution and not to get too hung up on who is working from where and how long they spend in an office. That said, employees can’t have it all their own way either. If you’re paid to do a job, it is reasonable to expect to spend some time in the office if the employer requires it. Flexibility and common sense is needed on both sides.
This is the first I have heard of the “coffee badging” practice. That probably only makes sense for employees that live close to the office. For companies that feel strongly that forcing employees to work in the office X days a week, it might make sense to provide greater incentives than free coffee. Maybe free lunches and snacks all day long might attract more workers to the office. Many companies already have benefits such as a fitness center and game rooms, but there may be other other creative incentives that appeal to employees.
I’ve never put much faith in the “I work just as well from home” school of thought (it’s much like the “I’m fine to drive” or “I’m as good as I ever was” claims in my book). So if I were to have a vote, it would be ‘yes’ (to mandates). But of course I don’t have a vote…with Amazon anyway, and I can’t imagine giving my opinion to a company of which its workplace I know absolutely nothing
Seeing that 30,000 Amazon employees a signed a petition against mandated office attendance, brings to light some questions for me.
1. Did work-at-home practices during the pandemic inadvertently mislead employees into believing that all work participation can be accomplished at home as well as in the office?
2. Is Amazon taking time to explain to employees why the company needs to interact with them in person? Has Amazon explained why in-person office time is essential to their full commitment?
3. Do today’s young employees understand why in-house meetings are not always replaceable by Zoom meetings?
I’m glad that Amazon quickly rejected the petition, and that the rules have been made clear that in order to work there, you need to abide by management’s rules. And besides the coffee is still free. – Db
I thought it was interesting that the words ‘collaborating’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘team meetings’ didn’t appear until the very end of the article. And it sounds like a lot of people define productivity as individual productivity. But what might be most important is team productivity. Lots of individuals may think they are doing great, rolling along at 65 mph. That doesn’t mean the team is rolling along at 65 mph. And some projects may require 100% office time for 100% of the team for weeks or months, and then lots of Zoom time can work just fine. This all sounds almost impossible to legislate with broad, general rules. But of course there needs to be some kind of overall guidelines, or there will quickly be cries of “unfair” or “don’t treat me like a high school student.”
I’ll make the observation that anybody with any opportunity for remote work might just want to be incredibly thankful and grateful. Period. When I think about the number of hours I spent on the freeway when I worked in Los Angeles, or on the train when I lived in CT and worked in NYC, I just cringe. So now people have a taste of remote work and of course they love it…!!! The productivity of their own life is vastly improved…!!! But people still need to respect the fact that they signed up for a job, as a member of a TEAM, and they need to respect the productivity of the team and the deliverables that team owes to the company.
Teamwork and collaboration are built face to face and elbow to elbow. Over time, they can function screen to screen, but they are built face to face.
“One worker suggested people will naturally rebel ‘if you treat employees like high school students.’” It seems to me that those who don’t want to go to the office are acting like high school students.
Maybe because I am old, old school. I don’t understand why someone would not want to go to the office. No matter how one tries to justify that they are more productive at home, the office is where the action is. Interaction among colleagues is how things get done. Or, at least, get done well.
And don’t forget the visibility it generates when it comes to raises and promotions. You never want the boss’s boss to say, ” Who?”
No, no, Gene, you’re not old school, your old high school! 🙂 My response to the person who offered that comment would be “if you don’t want to be treated like one, then don’t act like one”: (being asked to report to an office) “questioning their legality”?! Maybe middle school is a better metaphor.
Well, exactly. I think firms should be flexible. But, at the end of the day, if you take a job or work then you abide by the conditions of the company, including working from an office if that’s required!
Pretty straight forward. It’s not put up for a vote for everyone to decide.
Yes, corporate requirements for minimum attendance are a must have, especially when defining the corporate community and its’ boundaries. This question is a result of the pandemic era, which empowered employees to demand almost everything, leave jobs for minor reasons, and perform at dubious levels. Now that we are returning, many pandemic employees believe that these unique freedoms are theirs to define as they see fit. They aren’t. Corporations define employee boundaries, and should you feel differently, you can always go elsewhere to work. With record employment levels, and the lowest unemployment levels in modern history, our corporate communities are able to increase performance, all while effectively communicating a workplace environment that is superior to pre-pandemic levels. Any employees who disagree with their workplace environment can always complain to the department of labor for both their state and the federal government, or just leave. Complaining should always be a respected form of communication.
Yes, there is a “corporate community”. If you don’t want to be part of it, find another job.
Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of office work; I loved working from home during the pandemic. But, that time has passed, and my employer has also asked us to return to the office at least three days a week. My gut reaction here to the statement: “If you treat employees like high school students…: Well folks then stop acting like high school students.
Every company has the right to dictate, and I use that word specifically, the company’s operating policies. The discussion about WFH arrangements at Amazon seems to be over, for the time being at least. Adhere to the rules of the workforce. My advice to those rebelling; this privilege was a required accommodation which, prior to 2020, was fairly unusual, and I suspect, at Amazon, subject to a case-by-case review. That time has passed; it was never promised to be a permanent situation, and now you need to come back to the office. Without getting into the debate about the merits and productivity impact of working from home, this behavior is just childish and demonstrates pretty low EQ on the part of these workers. If you don’t like the policies of the company where you work, find an employer who can accommodate you. In the mean time, grow up.
The bigger question, as my fellow panelists realize, is the value of being in an office vs. working from home. There is no single correct answer because it depends on the nature of the work involved. And to issue a mandate based on “We did it this way before Covid” ignores the lasting cultural disruptions caused by the pandemic.
It didn’t get much publicity outside of Milwaukee, where Kohl’s employees thousands at its headquarters, but that retailer just mandated that its corporate employees need to be in the office at least four days a week if they live within 30 miles of its campus. This makes sense for teams where face-to-face collaboration helps the business (say, product development working with marketing), but perhaps less so with data scientists or others who can do their jobs effectively from home.
I understand why any company needs to be evenhanded in its approach instead of making team-by-team exceptions, but I also understand that the best employees (current or future) might choose to work under a more flexible policy.
Address the underlying issue. Give people good collaborative reasons to spend time in the office. Don’t make them come in to check a box on arbitrary time requirements. That’s a waste of their time and yours. Be open to the fact that collaboration may be better done as an in-person block of time a few days in a row, then none for a month as people execute against plan. It all depends on the team, what they’re trying to achieve, and their individual work styles. It has been shown that having diversity in the workforce improves outcomes. Optimal working style is just another form of diversity. Everyone is different. So rather than applying blanket rules, empower managers to figure out what works best for their own teams.
The jig is up. Working from home all week and the Great Resignation have faded, as employers have gained bargaining power over the past two years. Workers who (perhaps reluctantly) accept and respect their company’s return-to-work rules will gain an advantage over rebellious peers. Companies now have more data to know exactly who’s compliant.
The rules are arbitrary, these mandates are as silly as the ones pre-COVID. I’ll give you an example, I work with a team of 5, in 5 different cities, in 5 different states. I collaborate with nobody in my office, I cannot be promoted because I am no longer considered to be in a ‘key’ location. Yet, I’m expected to be in office 3 days/week. There are plenty of people in situations like this. I guess I’d go in to the office to have lunch with someone, but that’s about it.
For most of these companies it’s about control, and in some situations it’s being used as an excuse for poor performance. What will the next excuse be for poor performance?
Employers, as long as they pay their employees, need not give a reason for their decisions. If an employee ignores their employer’s directive then they should be dismissed.
Period.
While most employees want the option to work remotely (Firstbase.com, a leader in this field has mountains of data on remote or hybrid productivity and labor/cost savings), every company has a different culture and requirements for remote, hybrid, or in person to get things done. There’s no reason why a company shouldn’t be able to mandate a minimum amount of hours in person.
In Amazons case, they are about small teams working together closely, focused more on inputs over outputs. CEO Andy Jassy has made it crystal clear they need teams to cross paths in person and work together to accomplish company goals. And so if employees are skipping days or leaving early, then use of increased monitoring is on them.
I guess I was kind of a pioneer of the work-from-home movement, as I’ve been home-officed continuously since 1998. I don’t miss the 90-minute commutes to and from Manhattan one bit. Scheduling attendance at my kid’s events was hard too.
However, I do miss the collegial atmosphere at the companies I worked for. The infectious energy. The spontaneous consultations. The immersion in the mid-town vibe. The outstanding people.
For a while, frequent business travel to clients and industry events and periodic all-hands meetings at the office compensated for this deficit. I can state with certainty that a work week dominated by internal emails and Slack messages is a poor substitute.
For those young workers who chafe at the notion that their employers set the attendance rules, I remind you that I embarked on my personal career experiment after a 20-year first career. By then I had earned the right to make my own mistakes. I already had a cadre – a peer group – that helped me define my second career chapter.
I submit that when your company says, “be here,” it is acting for your benefit and the benefit of your team. Take it for the launchpad that it is and show up.