How coffee is provided and used in a workplace is intimately linked to the local company culture, and can be used to assess it and to steer it for better or for worse.

Coffee is used universally by workers of every kind, and you’d think it doesn’t matter how it is consumed. But looking back over a long career in a variety of workplace scenarios, I realize just how much you can learn from observing how coffee is served in a company, and how the choices that you – as a manager – make in this matter can influence the nature of the company’s human environment.

Coffee and team culture

Perhaps the most impactful aspect of coffee behavior in how it is done at the organic team level in smallish teams of 5 – 15 people. Drinking coffee comes naturally in a social context, and in a company, social equals collaboration, and collaboration equals results!

My first experience of this was as a postgraduate student, where shared coffee breaks were had together daily  by students, instructors and lab staff and were used as an opportunity for a delightful mix of intellectual exchange and  plain gossip. (Actually, my first experience of such group bonding was in an arts and crafts class I had in elementary school, where the teacher would screen 35 mm slides of art around the world at the end of each lesson; but at that tender age we had tea and cookies, not coffee…)

My first job, as a Forensic Physicist, saw me in a laboratory where Turkish coffee was cooked slowly in a pot on a Bunsen burner. This ritual was a formal group activity in its way, again resulting in an increase in group cohesion, not quite like the highly ritualized coffee ceremonies of the Bedouins or the British Five O’clock Tea, but close.

Another thing we did in that lab was offer any visitor a cup of our brew, and being literally brewed – as opposed to punched out on an automatic machine – made it a memorable act of friendship; indeed, that particular lab had a warm culture and had made many friends across the Law and Order communities, which in turn led to a rapport that made our interactions with them that much more effective.

When I joined Intel I still had labs under me, but Bunsens were out of the question due to stringent safety regulations; coffee stopped being a team thing, and would remain so until I went to work for a while – decades later – in a small start-up… more on this below. Sure, even in the corporate cube farm a “Shall we get coffee?” ritual precedes many one on one meetings, but it isn’t quite the same thing. The need remained, and some teams made up for it with weekly cake ceremonies, where members rotated bringing in a cake for the group to share the day before the weekend…

Coffee and the individual

Typical office workers consume large quantities of coffee, and companies provide diverse ways for them to get it.

The smallest companies make available kitchen corners and boiling water, but they differ in how the coffee and sugar are provided. Some employers just fund the supply; others leave it up to people to bring the coffee powder themselves. This already tells you something about the employer: being so stingy as to make employees pay for their sugar reminds me of those (probably fake) lists of 19th century office rules.

If employees need to bring their own supplies, it is interesting to see how they go about it: in some offices each employee brings their own, keeping it in their locked drawer, or in the kitchen area with a big name sticker to deter theft. Other teams are nicer, and have a “coffee fund” with one coffee jar paid for jointly by all. Then there are places that use a pay-as-you-go honor system. Every case tells you something about the culture of the team, notably about their level of mutual trust (or lack thereof).

In larger companies you have coin-operated coffee machines producing various types and qualities of coffee (way back when I relocated to Silicon Valley in the eighties the stuff coming out of those was so yucky that I’d bring in a thermos of coffee every day; mercifully Starbucks had brought the US to appreciate real coffee, so those days are gone). In recent years corporations brought in coffee vendors like Starbucks who sell posh coffee to the connoisseurs in the workforce… a welcome perk, as long as cheaper coffee is also available. Thus, the individual feeling a yen for a caffeine fix has a number of ways to get the drink any time of the day and night.

Coffee and company culture

A company’s attitude to providing coffee is a very visible part of the company culture, and often derives from the company’s earliest days and the philosophy of its founders.

The first question is whether coffee is free or not. Take the price of coffee in vending machines on the premises. This can be market price, subsidized, or free. Charging the full price from employees that work for you the way they do in Hi-tech is certainly a bad sign for the company, and employees will be sure to resent it; a company that waves a flag of “respect for our employees, the key to our success” (and don’t they all) should know better. An employer should provide coffee like it provides air to breathe (another sine qua non). However, in a large corporation free coffee may actually be a bad idea (I’ve seen a company that raised the price from zero to 10% of market and saw consumption plummet and stabilize at a sensible level).

Another culture-related question has to do with equality. Do all employees get to use the same type of coffee machines? Or are there elite groups – by rank, or by function – who have at their disposal more luxurious machines, like Espresso makers, that lowlier folks are barred from accessing? I’ve seen a short-lived attempt to introduce this segregation in a company, until protest from the dis-enfranchised (de-caffeinated?) put an end to it.

And then there’s the question of who makes the coffee. Do managers get it served to them by their secretaries, or do they go to the machine or vendor station and wait in line to get their own? These two modes differentiate very different company cultures, often going back decades. It matters a lot – I remember my pride as a young Intel employee when I realized that my General Manager would wait for me to get my coffee first if I was ahead of him in the line!

Some companies use high-grade coffee as a visible perk. I worked for some time at a start-up company that had a top of the line Lavazza machine with free cartridges; not only did this generosity convey a message of attention to people  in an otherwise austere operation, it also gave people an opportunity to show off (and teach) their milk frothing skills. Like with the Turkish coffee mentioned above, this dependence on the skill of the “barista” made the experience way more personal and communal than what you get with a pushbutton machine.

The locations for making and drinking coffee also matter. Two common setups are the “get your coffee and go to your office with it” and the “make coffee and drink it on location with a coworker or two”. The cultural implications are clear, but there is also a business consideration: having small coffee areas – “mini-cafeterias” I called them when I was working on alternative office paradigms at Intel – has a major benefit for knowledge management. Sure, people can go to the main cafeteria two floors below at the other end of the building, but they’re much more likely to talk if the coffee and the comfortable few armchairs or tables to sit in are not far from their cubes. And since short breaks are necessary for health and sanity in a hectic workplace, it’s a good idea to make these breaks at an accessible place conducive to relaxation and conversation rather than alone in separate cubicles.

What YOU can do about this

If you’re a manager you can use your influence to apply some of the ideas described above in your company. You can push for provision of better coffee, in a way that conveys to employees that the company acknowledges their favorite little vice and wants them to exercise it in comfort. Make coffee available a comfortable distance from wherever people work. If you manage a small group, consider encouraging some shared coffee break ritual that the group would find fun and interesting. And use your own familiarity with the local culture to identify how far you can push for equality, fairness, and any other ideas that I may not have thought of (if you have any, share with us in the comments!).

And remember: a bad coffee policy (whether real or perceived) is highly visible to employees and invites gripes and bad feelings among them. Perhaps your best approach is to ask the employees themselves how happy (or not) they are, and what they would improve if they could. Then go do it!

If you’re an individual, you’ll notice I haven’t talked here about the pros and cons of coffee drinking in any given amount… it’s up to you to find what’s good for you, and to enjoy it!

As for myself, I always love to share war stories and insight with like minded people over a good cappuccino… so if you’re in my neck of the woods, do drop me a line or a call and let’s do it!

Related posts

I can’t say there are other coffee related articles on this blog – but you’re welcome to some light-hearted posts related to the design of coffee gear on my other blog, Commonsense Design.