Should you Bring Your Dog to work?

Friday 25th June is Bring Your Dog to Work Day, something which has been around since 2014.

Once seen as a ‘fad’, having dogs at work with you is becoming more prevalent and of course, with most of us working from home, we’ve had our existing and new pets with us every day as a ‘co-worker’.  With lots of organisations considering a return to the office in some form or another, should you consider allowing people to bring their dogs to the office?

There is plenty of evidence of the positive benefits for allowing this in terms of employee productivity and wellbeing, with studies showing a substantial reduction in stress, (a Virginia Commonwealth University study showed that those employees that displayed the lowest stress levels had their pets at work), increased job satisfaction, a decrease on absenteeism (Blue Cross), team co-operation and morale.  And of course, if you have your dog with you, you need to get up from your desk every so often to take it outside for 5 minutes so improving time spent taking a breather, physically moving and therefore addressing mental health and musculoskeletal issues.

One note of caution, there are some people who are scared of dogs, so it would be sensible to check that it won’t cause increased stress or absenteeism for those people.

The lines between ‘work’ and ‘home’ have become blurred, and employers need to review how they ‘reward’ their people not just in terms of tangible employee benefits like pension or health cover, but also in the things that have grown in importance, like our pets.

One of our clients has had an ‘Office Dog’ for a few years; Olive even features on their website  – and has her own business card.  They have certainly reported positive benefits.

Something to mull over, when the time is right to invite people back to the office, whether full time, or hybrid.

A Bring Your Dog to Work Day post wouldn’t be much without pictures of our dogs, would it?!