Office peacocking: All about this emerging workplace trend – Times of India

It was in early 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic forced most corporate employees to work from home across the world– a work trend that drastically shaped the future of work. And now four years later, many employers are still struggling and trying to get back their employees to full-time work from office setup. To lure employees back to the office, many companies are even practicing “office peacocking“– a workplace trend which is gaining momentum.
“We just passed the fourth year anniversary of the pandemic and many employers still haven’t yet given up on trying to return to pre-pandemic policies despite our data showing that many employees will make sacrifices to achieve flexibility in where they work, as 62% would take a pay cut of 10% or more to remain hybrid,” Frank Weishaupt, CEO- Owl Labs, told Forbes.
So what is “office peacocking”? Well, many companies are now getting their office space re-designed in a fancy way, getting the office pantry stocked, and having furniture– all in the pursuit of luring employees to come back to office. This move is often termed as “office peacocking”, a trend which has been there earlier too but is now on the rise.
However, office peacocking has further given rise to other workplace trends like coffee badging– where employees go to office only for a short time, grab a cup of coffee and make their presence felt and then leave for home; and shadow policies— wherein certain managers allow few of their employees to work from home even though the it is officially over.
Some employees who are into side hustles for earning more money, even go to the extend of coming to office on sick-days so that they can take day-offs of normal work days– either to recharge and relax or work on their side projects.
All of this shows that the pandemic has definitely had a huge impact on the way people work. It has made the average employees realise the importance of having time for themselves and have better work-life balance. It also makes the employers and companies think of better ways to retain and get their workers back, not just by office peacocking but also by providing other employee benefits like flexi work hours, allowance for commuting cost, doing away with the formal dress code, better privacy, and more.