Coffee badging is a phenomenon that has been around for a while. It is the term for those employees who show up in the morning (badge in), grab coffee, stay long enough to be seen, and disappear as quickly as possible. It is also a trend that is increasing in offices.
This trend is a signal that your employees feel spied upon, forced to do something not in their best interests, and are being measured around the wrong things. Anyone willing to submit themselves to a commute simply to badge in is trying to send you a message. It allows you to see a full badge report but still get the experience of an empty office; the worst of both worlds.
Since before COVID, badge data overestimated actual workplace occupancy. In my experience, it was usually 10 to 20% higher than the desk occupancy at the peak of the day. This is because the traditional eight-hour day was not so traditional for many, even before the pandemic. There are lots of reasons to work from the office in the morning but leave after lunch (or vice versa). Similarly, some people do not like sitting at a traditional desk either because they are back-to-back in meetings for a large block of the day or because they find it less productive for them. With silent resistance to mandates, I would not be surprised to discover workplaces where badge data overestimates occupancy by as much as 50%.
Employees do not always communicate with their voices. After all, actions speak louder than words. In too many corporate cultures, trust is not all that strong. These are the cultures that often lean heavily into mandates and monitoring. Employees are not dumb, they know how the system works and they know how to use it to their advantage. If you have an open mind and are willing to listen to the data, it will point you toward a win-win path.
Ultimately, coffee badging is a condemnation of culture because it means managers do not trust their employees to do the right things, employees do not trust their managers to put them in positions to succeed, and corporate rules allow for a big brother-type tracking scenario. It all leads to a standoff between parties that should be working together.