From ‘quiet quitting’ to ‘coffee badging’ — why employees are less interested in work

Some workers are phoning it in, and it shows.

After mostly trending up for years, workplace engagement has flatlined. Now, only one-third of full- and part-time employees are engaged in their work and workplace, while roughly 50% are not engaged — reflected in the evolution of “quiet quitting” — and the rest, another 16%, are actively disengaged, according to a 2023 Gallup poll released earlier this year.

To be sure, quiet quitting, or coasting, has become a sign of the post-pandemic times, some experts say, with more employees trying to do the least they can get away with without drawing the attention of a boss or manager.

The latest example of this detachment is “coffee badging.”

Coffee badging is the practice of going into the office for a few hours to “show face,” which could entail coffee with co-workers or sitting in on a work meeting — but then leaving to work remotely.

More than half — 58% — of hybrid employees admitted to checking in at the office and then promptly checking out, according to a 2023 survey by Owl Labs, a company that makes videoconferencing devices.

“Employees have become accustomed to the flexibility of working from home and may only come to the office when absolutely necessary,” said David Satterwhite, CEO of Chronus, a software firm focused on improving employee engagement. “It’s just too hard to put that genie back in the bottle.”

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Roger Hall, a business psychologist based in Boise, Idaho, says this latest trend comes as no surprise, especially considering how much easier it has become to work virtually and how many employees feel disengaged.

“Anytime there is an accountability method that is easy to circumvent, human beings will circumvent the accountability,” he said.

In part, there is a fatigue that has accelerated since the Covid pandemic from being increasingly connected to work, Hall also said. “Every time an email or text comes in, we get a ding.”

Almost 50% of workers are distracted at least once every half hour, according to a new study by Unily, and nearly a third are distracted at least once every 15 minutes.

“For every interruption, it takes about 20 minutes to get at a deep level of concentration again,” Hall said. “If you do the math, if their interruptions are at every 15 minutes, then never, in the course of a day, ever [is someone] at a deep level of concentration.”

“At the end of the day, our brain is tapped out,” Hall said. The result is that “we are less productive — that has taken a hit.”

Not engaged or actively disengaged employees account for approximately $1.9 trillion in lost productivity nationwide, Gallup found.

“The issue isn’t just about employees badging in and out; it’s about what drives this lack of motivation and interest,” Satterwhite said.

Research shows that employees are more engaged when they have opportunities for development, learning, mentorship and career pathing, he noted. “Without these, ‘coffee badging’ is just a symptom of a deeper problem.”

While 56% of workers consider themselves to be ambitious, 47% are not focused on career progression at all, according to Randstad’s 2024 Workmonitor, which surveyed 27,000 workers globally.

These days, employees are more likely to consider work-life balance, flexible hours and mental health support as more important, the report found. And fewer want to spend any more time at the office than they already do.

“We saw a huge acceleration of the shift to hybrid work during the pandemic and people don’t want to give this up,” Sander van ‘t Noordende, Randstad’s CEO, told CNBC.

To that point, 37% of workers now say they would consider quitting their job if their employer asked them to spend more time in the office, and 39% say that working from home is nonnegotiable, Randstad found.