Want employees to come to the office? Pick up their laundry and welcome their dogs, too—they will be more motivated to do their jobs, and they will see the benefits of the company, according to a new study.
The business journal Fast Company ran a story last week about the benefits of having a dog in the office and was interviewed by a veterinarian named Susan Wojcicki, who said that she has seen people come up to her after hours to discuss their dogs. The best part, of course, was not that they were discussing their dogs, but that they weren’t discussing a pet-killing time bomb in the building.
When Fast Company asked about the effect of dogs in the office, she said, “One of the things she said to me was she did a presentation at the local university and brought her dog to the presentation. The dog was amazing. One of her colleagues came up to me and said, ‘I could not believe my eyes, I just walked in and there was a dog in the room!’ It was quite incredible.”
This is an important finding in a study that Wojcicki, the co-founder of the company Behavior Dynamics, did a few years ago. It appears that it has been generally accepted for a long time that having dogs in the office makes employees more motivated. If the dogs are the only thing that motivates people, then you better take action. And this research suggests it makes some employees happier.
The study in question was done with a variety of human and dog demographics but focused on a type of employee called a manager-level employee. These employees are called managers in the workplace because they are in charge of things like HR, engineering, sales, and marketing. (You should probably never call a boss a manager.) These employees are supposed to be able to run their departments and make decisions. A manager-level employee is the one who can