S5E7 – Coffee Badging At the New Cafe In Town?

Subha and Hasita explore the nuances of the evolving workplace dynamics amidst the return-to-office mandates. They delve into the concept of coffee badging, where employees meet in the office for a cup of coffee to signal their presence. The conversation navigates through the challenges faced by employees and companies in adapting to new work models, questioning the need for rigid return-to-office policies. As they discuss the importance of intentional communication, flexibility, and individual responsibility, they aim to uncover a path toward a positive and inclusive shift in the modern workplace.

Discussion Topics: Coffee Badging At the New Cafe In Town?

• What is coffee badging?
• If no one’s happy, why are they doing this?
• If we can work from home efficiently, why are we changing it?
• What is the company’s perspective on bringing back WFO?
• Forcing employees to show up physically is counterproductive – how to solve it?
• Diffuse the responsibility from the organisational level to the management level
• Small startups can really benefit by asking what the team wants
• Where does the individual responsibility come in?
• Summing it up

Transcript: Coffee Badging At the New Cafe In Town?

Subha: Welcome to another episode of Small Talk With Rainkraft podcast. Hasita, I’m wondering if you’re free kind of maybe Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. Three times a week should be good.

Hasita Krishna: Okay, what for?

Subha: So I’m going to come to your office and have a cup of coffee with you and then come back to my office. That’s about it.

Hasita Krishna: Yeah, I’m sure you mean well, but why? Hmm.

What is coffee badging?

Subha: this new trend of what they’re calling coffee badging. And I’ve been reading about how. Because companies may be requesting that employees come to work more often. Employees are turning up, saying hello to colleagues, having a nice cup of coffee, collecting their kind of badge of approval for turning up and then heading back home. So I want to do that too.

Hasita Krishna: Let’s do it. And let’s be part of this new workplace jargon that’s crept in after quitting and what was the next one?

Subha: There was a great resignation. Then There was the great rejoining, right? Something like that.

Hasita Krishna: Something like that.

Subha: something that everyone is talking about because it’s, it’s kind of like a bit of a sore point right now. That this return to office mandates are just increasing by the day. I mean, TCS, probably one of the largest IT employers, is going from like twice a week to thrice a week to saying everybody returned to your home city and landed up in your home base office. Which feels like a task because so many people have reorganised their lives in this, whatever we were calling is to throw one more jargon, new normal and all that.

Hasita Krishna: I’m just thinking though, being sold for whom, is it the companies that are requesting a great emphasis that is feeling sore about not having people come back, or is it the people who are feeling the pressure of again, having to change their lifestyles in three, four years, or is it both? And if no one’s happy, then why are we even doing this?

If no one’s happy, why are they doing this?

Subha: I think from the employee side, clearly family dynamics have changed, work schedules have been realigned the kind of child care, elder care, and how you’ve managed just basic cost of living by moving to a smaller town or your hometown, all of that has made significant changes in, let’s say a working couple’s life, right?

A good friend and his wife moved from, a very nuclear family existence in Bangalore to Kanpur and with parents, much more of an extended family able to do more work and spend more time with kids and elders. And has now decided I can just permanently stay here.

Hasita Krishna: Which is a very fair conclusion to come to,

Subha: So I think from an employee side, the main thing is that perhaps their life has already got, I mean, there was an upheaval. And then you’ve settled into a different reorganised schedule which has been working okay and one of the things that organisations have been thankful for is that in this entire kind of few years of chaos, work has always continued to happen.

Hasita Krishna: But I’m just thinking how many people’s lives have changed so significantly? Like, I’m just thinking you and I both run our own thing and work remotely anyway, but we are still here in the same city before and during the pandemic. So I’m just statistically, let’s say even from an employment standpoint, how many people’s lives have been so significantly changed? In the context of how they work. 

How many employees’ lives have changed significantly due to this?

Subha: I think a lot of people left bigger cities because if you’re alone. Or a nuclear setup, then why spend so much and pay heavy rentals and work from home in Bangalore, Bombay or Delhi, if you had another option, it may not even be about spending less, but it may be that I’m willing to also spend more, but enjoy this flexibility.

Hasita Krishna: Yeah.

Subha: was looking for a weekend getaway and almost every ad or every write-up that I saw for a location. It talked about how you could also do a work occasion there. You could rent it for weeks, one month, longer periods and just work from there. So maybe it was also about, Hey, let me, let me organise myself the way I enjoy it also

If we can work from home efficiently, why are we changing it?

Hasita Krishna: Actually that I can empathise with and also resonate with a lot, because say, for example, families with children or caregiving responsibility it’s easier when you’re present, right? Physically. And for a long time, I think it was not even imaginable for a lot of us to say, I might be able to work from home, but.

Now we can imagine it. We have lived through it. So why are we really kind of changing it? I think there’s also some probable amount of frustration from the fact that if you remember as soon as the lockdown hit the very next day, we were just working from home processes and systems and how we did it. All of that happened later. But the fact is that the first thing we showed up for was working,

Subha: correct

Hasita Krishna: So when we’ve reiterated that commitment to that extent, maybe it feels like a decision that’s been imposed on us without ours. Contribution to it in any way.

Subha: That’s what I’m saying. During this entire period of turmoil, no company has really complained that productivity was an issue. On the other hand, everybody was happy with the increased productivity. And so if you’ve taken a bit of advantage of all of that, and we have made sure that the ship is sailing smoothly, just cut us some slack and believe that we will continue to do the good work, no?

Hasita Krishna: It’s interesting that you bring up the productivity perspective, right? Because as you said, from the individual side, when you look at it, it’s that I still showed up. I still did not only what I was supposed to do, but above and beyond. What was expected of me, despite which I saw a lot of my colleagues being let go in the years that followed. And now you are also telling me that I do not have agency in how I live my life anymore because we are, Hey, guess what? Three days a week. I have to come drink coffee, say hi and go back.

Subha: And even for you and me, as running our smaller level businesses. The number of meetings that we have converted to online, right? If I think back to when I started Raincraft, almost every new client or prospective new client would say, Hey, why don’t you come down and meet us?

Right. And without batting an eyelid, I would say and then track all the way across the city for a 20-minute meeting, right? And then try and figure out, can I meet someone else on this side of town? How can I make better use of my time or end up for a few hours between meetings in a coffee shop? And now, when I look back, it was needed at that stage.

And it is definitely like, meeting somebody physically, especially for meetings early in the relationship or the engagement is. Truly beneficial, but many of those could have been a Zoom call.

What is the company perspective for bringing back WFO?

Hasita Krishna: So true, which is why I’m also thinking, what is the company perspective here? Because it’s an infrastructure expense, right? You have to rent out a space, you have to potentially provide transportation to a bunch of people. Then there’s the coffees that they’re coming to drink and the lunches and the air conditioning and whatever you can think of. So really, what is the benefit to that cost? If there is a benefit to that cost, why are they not being a little more vocal about it?

Subha: Yeah. I think one is that a lot of the cost is fixed. So it’s like, I’ve told my employees that between Monday to Friday, you need to come twice. Right. And I’m guessing most people are choosing the middle of the week or getting it over in the first part, right? And very few go in on a Friday. Those are just some human behaviours.

We’re like that. but Monday to Friday, I have to keep all the lights on and have housekeeping and have all the infrastructure and et cetera, et cetera. If I’m going to do that, then I need to optimise it because I don’t know now who’s going to come in when or something like that.

So some kind of cost benefit to that. All of these larger tech companies from a Bangalore perspective who are calling in people, they also have a very large supplier network, right? People who are supplying the canteens, who are supplying cabs and buses for pickup and other things. All of them must be definitely lobbying to say, hey, let’s get back to full strength. What’s stopping you?

Hasita Krishna: no, make sense, make sense,

Subha: And these are also specific to a few industries. So many didn’t have the luxury of even Any kind of,

Hasita Krishna: work from home.

Subha: yeah, even in banking, I remember my ex colleagues, they all used to do shifts of two, three weeks in a row and then home for a couple during peak COVID that too. Because you needed to have the branches open to healthcare, and hospitality. I mean, so many field sales in some cases, you didn’t get this kind of luxury.

Hasita Krishna: And because you don’t want to see what’s happening. Also, is that person who’s now being forced to go to work and didn’t want to in the first place is going is interacting is having whatever it is that they’re having and coming back and is feeling like they’ve had a productive day on average when in fact probably you’re losing those two days of productivity and I’m sure engagement is going to be the next thing to follow.

In those instances, because we are not meant to operate like that, not to say that Monday to Wednesday, my job description is to go show my face and come back. Like that’s not a motivator for a lot of people, even, coming from a good place and saying, I’m very loyal to this company. Still, if you made me come twice a week for no reason how long would I last?

So is it counterproductive and how do we solve for something like that?

Forcing employees to show up physically is counterproductive – how to solve it?

Subha: I think you’ve asked the right question. Like if I’m coming for no reason, and I think that’s what needs to be answered. Like, why are they coming?

Hasita Krishna: Hmm.

Subha:if you’re going to not look into it at all, and say, I’m mandating return to work, and I don’t really care. Then you have to face the repercussions of that.

But if organisations and the leaders and the managers could say, Hey, okay, let me truly embrace flexibility where I can afford to give that flexibility.

Hasita Krishna: Right.

Subha: would that look like then as a manager or as a leader, I will have to. Say, hey, why am I bringing this person in? And when they do come in, how can I make that day more useful for them and me? Right? Because if that day is going to look and feel exactly like the day they spent at home. Then clearly we’re not meeting any objective here.

Hasita Krishna: Hmm. 

Subha: I’ve got a cousin who says she has to go thrice a week, despite having a small baby at home to meet no one because her team and her manager are in the U S 

Hasita Krishna: yeah

Subha: there

Hasita Krishna: even worse. Like the blanket application of that policy can go wrong in so many different ways. Yeah.

Subha: right? Then there is a friend whose manager was saying he goes to a certain location because their office has multiple buildings across the city. He goes to a certain building, which is the closest to his home and his team members go to different buildings closer to their home.

So again, they’re not physically meeting as a team.

Hasita Krishna: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Subha: Well, that same team meeting they’re doing instead of home from the office. So I think the first is to sit down and say, okay, we want to see how much of this we can embrace, right? Let’s have some conversation saying what is the kind of work we do in this and how much of it is brainstorming that will benefit us sitting face to face in a room because we also know if when we do sit together.

We get

Hasita Krishna: We seem to come up with more ideas and Yeah, absolutely. Hmm.

Subha: We are not saying, Oh, I’m with you only for these 40 minutes on zoom and, I kind of turn on the brain and then I turn off the brain on this topic,

Hasita Krishna: Yeah. Yeah. Fair

Subha: Which is what happens when you’re jumping from call to call. So firstly, I think about managers and have to think about them. What does embracing flexibility look like?

And if so far on that scale, am I willing to move? So what am I okay with? So, if there are young moms or new hires, let’s say new hires, I want them in because I want them to meet people. I want them to know how the system works, right? tHose who have other restrictions, constraints, if I can allow for it and.

And also I think being okay with it, I can’t always have one rule that fits all.

Diffuse the responsibility from organisational level to management level

Hasita Krishna: yeah. And what I’m also hearing is to diffuse that responsibility to the manager level. You’ve made an organisation level decision, but let each individual manager be in charge of how they want to enforce that decision. Otherwise you’re leaving the manager with no choice, but to say, Hey, new mom, you’ve got to come.

Subha: I mean, women in the workforce is a problem that is big enough already, and we don’t need to add to

Hasita Krishna: words in it. Hopefully with,

Subha: women drop off because of such rigid rules. Right. So I think to see what we are really looking for when we say we want people to come back And then communicate better.

Listening. Okay. What do you want? What is today holding you back? Or what would be better for you from a structure perspective? aN employee may also say that if I’m turning up Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Then maybe my manager also turns up Monday, Wednesday, Friday, then at least there’s some point

Hasita Krishna: yeah, genuinely, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or at least we do Monday, Wednesday, and we decide what to do about Friday, which is, I think also , a transition level teething problem as I’m perceiving it as well. Maybe in another two, three months, some companies will at least realise that. Yes. Yes, we have mandated something, but it’s not a uniform, something that now we can go about imposing everywhere.

Small startups can really benefit by asking what the team wants

Subha: and small SMEs and startups can really benefit by saying, okay, as a team, what do we really need? maybe we’re too small to allow this now

Hasita Krishna: Yeah.

Subha: somehow managed through it, but we would be so much more nimble and able to put out so much more if all of us sat in a room for four, five hours a day.

Hasita Krishna: And I think maybe that agility is harder to quantify, but maybe all it needs is to look at it for a month. especially for startups. And I completely get where you’re coming from because a lot of problems are being solved on the fly and they may not be documentation and processes for everything.

So when you’re doing stuff on the fly, I guess it is always easier to have people in, in the general vicinity of each other.

Subha: When you’re smaller teams, genuinely, like you don’t want everything to be okay, we had a meeting here are the minutes of the meeting circulate like you don’t have that time and

Hasita Krishna: I’m yeah. Yeah. And resources, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.

Subha: because you’re already doing two, three kinds of roles you don’t have that bandwidth to do it. So it makes sense that, okay, we all come in and knowing that, there is a bit of personal life that is creeped into everybody’s work life in terms of

Hasita Krishna: Mm hmm.

Subha: that we are doing less work.

We say, okay, Fridays, everybody takes a call. We’d love to have you in and then that’s understood. That’s not a day where we’re expecting 100 percent in office,

Hasita Krishna: Right. Fair enough. Yeah,

Subha: Most importantly, we, by now, for your own business function, organisation, the kind of work you do, figure out how to measure outcomes. all of us know, like if, like your writers who are remote, if, if every day they have written X for you and turned it in, then you don’t really care where they’re sitting.

Hasita Krishna: yeah. For me, it’s honestly after the family, please go live your lives. And this is something we’ve spoken about as well. Again, in the context of engagement, I’m just thinking, where does the individual interest Responsibility come into all of this, right? Because yes, we have all had to face circumstances which are tough and we’ve reacted to it in ways that felt right at the time, but finally our careers are still ours, right?

So what choices can we intentionally make in these contexts, which might firstly serve us better and also end up serving. That career that we want to build for ourselves.

Where does the individual responsibility come in?

Subha: even before the pandemic, I was working and advising for a friend who runs a law firm and had team members in different locations and We’re talking to the team and saying, Hey, it’s also on you maybe on Monday to say, Hey, I’m sitting in this location, tracking these cases because they’re going to court, waiting for dockets, et cetera.

This is what I expect are the four or five things that I will get done this week. And then by Thursday, send an update saying this is where we are on those and anything, which is a red flag, flag it either immediately or say by Wednesday saying, Hey, it’s not really going as per plan. These are the few things.

So the supervisor, manager, founder sitting somewhere else is not feeling the pinch of this remote. They’re clued in

Hasita Krishna: because they have to do this for 10 people. No, finally.

Subha: don’t make them ask 10 people,

Hasita Krishna: Perfectly logical, way of going about it also not to say this is what I’m taking charge of. And do it from a place of genuine, I think, adding that value, we all have that perspective on our organisations. It’s not that we don’t, we just need to maybe put our hand up and say, yeah, this is what I’m able to own.

And honestly, there’s some relief in that. Even if you don’t show up on a certain day, you still know that this person is dependable.

Summing it up

Subha: It gives everybody comfort. I think if we look at the three things that we have talked about, one is, If I embrace flexibility because the rules of the game have changed and this is where we’re heading to as a world. And what does that look like? Secondly, communicating, listening, asking the questions, what’s working for you, what’s not, what do you want from me as your manager, et cetera.

And thirdly, being very clear in both directions on what the goals and outcomes and progress is. I think all of it seems to come down to just very, very Intentional, positive listening and asking and telling

Hasita Krishna: Yeah. Honestly, what I’m taking away here also, Subha, is that maybe there were certain circumstances that were imposed and we didn’t have a lot of choice in how we can go about that. But now that we do to a large extent at the systems level and the people level, how can we make this a positive shift in the workplace? And definitely a more inclusive shift. I think it’s time.

Subha:it’s definitely time. A lot of things have changed. And even in terms of the way we’re working communication tools this just so much that there’s been a shift on and it’s a pity to not embrace some of those opportunities and create newer and newer ways of work, right.

Hasita Krishna: So true.

Subha: Thanks for coming for coffee. Bye.