Love it, hate it or wished it stayed under wraps, the secret on coffee badging is out, and not everyone is a fan.

Coffee badging, or the act of going into the office for a few hours to show face, then finishing the remainder of the workday from home or another location, took off in the last year after a 2023 report showed a majority of hybrid workers were in on the act.

But the latest report from Owl Labs, the videoconferencing tech-maker, found that the share of people working in this way dropped in the last year to 44% from 58%.

Some have faced repercussions: 70% of workers said they've been caught coffee badging by their bosses, and 16% are now required to be in the office for the full day.

That said, a majority, 59%, of coffee badgers said their boss doesn't mind.

"There shouldn't be a negative connotation to coffee badging," says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, who says he does it too. Being strategic about in-office time means "you're meeting with your colleagues, you're mentoring employees, you're being mentored or you're doing other collaboration activities," he says. "And so what if that's a two- to three-hour period?"

Weishaupt himself says he's done the reverse of coffee badging, where he'll start his day from home, drive in mid-day to avoid morning traffic, and finish the rest of his day from the office.

"The standard has been set around flexibility in terms of where you work, and now the standard is starting to become flexibility in when you work," he told CNBC Make It last year. The traditional eight-hour workday from the office "just doesn't seem all that relevant."

Case in point: It turns out managers are more likely to coffee badge than their reports. The difference signals a "massive inequality" in the enforcement of return-to-office requirements, Weishaupt says.

Coffee badging, on the other hand, can boost productivity, he says, by inspiring teams to audit their calendars and be intentional about their in-person collaboration versus independent work time.

Office workers are taking control of their time

When workers do report to the office, they're using calendar blocking to protect their time from the distractions of being on-site.

Overall, 58% of employees say they block time on their calendars for focused work and to keep them from being pulled into meetings. But the practice is overwhelmingly more common among full-time office workers (64%) compared with those who are hybrid (28%) and remote (8%).

It's noteworthy that in-office workers are most likely to signal and block their focused time, Weishaupt says, and brings into question whether that time needs to be spent at a certain location like an office.

"When I look at my calendar on a weekly basis, there are pockets where I need collaboration and benefit from doing that in-person versus Zoom," he says. "And then there are pockets where I'm doing self-guided work and may not necessarily need to be in the office."

A growing body of research in recent years has shown office mandates don't do much to boost company success, and instead can negatively impact employee satisfaction; businesses with hybrid and flexible schedules, meanwhile, have positive impacts on employee performance, financial performance and overall worker wellbeing.

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