GUEST BLOG | Attracting workers back to the office with coffee culture

With the vaccine programme in full swing and lockdown beginning to ease, many employers are making plans for workforces to return to the office. But, with 57% of UK workers wanting to work from home all or part of the time post-covid, we look at ways ‘coffee culture’ could help attract your team back to the office.

The office has been slowly evolving over the past decade, but with 12 months of working from home under our belts, this has been hugely accelerated.

At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, nearly 50% of people in employment completed some or all of their work from home, compared to just 32% the year before.

Many organisations sceptical of homeworking have now embraced the concept and found most of their team worked much more productively. Furthermore, research conducted in September 2020 found that 4 in 10 UK workers would prefer to work from home part-time when life returns to normal.

However, not all tasks can be completed from home effectively, with decision making and collaborative working suffering due to homeworking.

To encourage workers back to the office more often, employers will need to work hard to create a workspace and workplace experience that employees want to be part of, which is where an office coffee culture can help.

 

 

What is an Office Coffee Culture?

With the nature of the workplace changing to support tasks that can’t be performed well from home, businesses will need to reorganise their offices to create more space for collaborative working.

However, it’s not all about creating a space that looks good, it’s also about creating a warm, friendly and open company culture that encourages creativity and communication, where people can thrive, and introducing the fundamentals of ‘cafe culture’ can help to create this.

Consider a laid back, open plan seating area with comfy chairs and a premium commercial coffee machine to create a space where good ideas will happen.

By providing a state-of-the-art touchless coffee machine, you can also reduce a common touch point within the office, reducing the risk of cross contamination of pathogens and viruses.

 

 

Advantages of Office Coffee Culture

Encourage Creative Thinking

It’s very challenging to come up with new, creative and innovative ideas where you’re sat in the same place staring at a screen all day. Discussing ideas in a low-pressure environment with a fantastic cup of coffee to fuel creativity could be the solution your office needs to boost a deflated team.

Improve Team Wellbeing

Workplace wellbeing has gone from being a ‘nice to have’ to essential criteria for attracting and maintaining talent.

An essential part of wellbeing is making healthy decisions, and whilst coffee won’t have the same effect on your health as going for a run, it can contribute to a healthy lifestyle.

Coffee contains vitamins B2, B3 and B5, whilst the caffeine in coffee can help to increase your metabolic rate and significantly improve performance during exercise.

Coffee is also proven to increase the transmission or serotonin and dopamine in the brain, improving your mood and making you more alert.

Increase Employee Productivity

Small perks go a long way in making your employees feel valued, which in turn improves engagement, increases productivity and helps retain staff. A top-quality bean to cup coffee machine capable of producing barista quality coffee is one such perk, especially if it saves a trip to Starbucks every morning!

Want to find the perfect Liquidline coffee machine for your team? Contact us here.