What to do about dogs in the office
Theodore Roosevelt’s bull terrier once chased the French ambassador up a tree. Commander, President Joe Biden’s German shepherd, had to be rusticated after repeatedly biting Secret Service officers. Sir Gavin Williamson, a British politician, refused to remove a tarantula he kept in a glass tank from the office. He defended the presence of Cronus by insisting the “clean, ruthless killer” was “part of the team”.
Pets, more commonly dogs than spiders, have long been a feature of all sorts of workplaces. Google’s code of conduct states that “Affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture.” Ben & Jerry’s, an ice-cream company, dishes out treats to pooches at its reception desk. Over the decades dogs have wandered around The Economist’s head office in London and snoozed on the carpet.
Pets have become an even bigger part of work life since the covid-19 pandemic. Searches for pet-friendly offices on job platforms have rocketed. One in five American families acquired a pet during lockdowns; two-thirds of households now have at least one. For those working from home, a pet dog is a trusty companion between (or during) Zoom calls and an excuse to go for walks. Those who want to go into the office may find that their pets cannot be left alone, and that doggy day-care is frightfully expensive. That leaves managers under increasing pressure to let them in. How welcoming should they be?
Apart from, perhaps, in operating theatres or sausage factories, there are obvious benefits to a permissive approach. Welcoming pets can act as a recruitment or retention tool; a few especially fond owners admit online that they have left their full-time jobs in order to spend more time with their furry friends. Letting people bring their pets in can also be a way to entice workers to spend more time at the office.
Dogs in the workplace can boost morale and productivity, and not only those of their owners. Marc Benioff, the boss of Salesforce, named Koa, his now-deceased golden retriever, the company’s “chief love officer”. Petting colleagues’ pooches can also lead to serendipitous conversations, and reduce feelings of isolation. Experiments suggest that employees are more likely to perceive those in a team as friendly if there’s a dog in the vicinity than if there isn’t. That can be a route to fruitful collaboration across the organisation.
The problem for managers, though, is that some people hate dogs, even if they keep their loathing to themselves. They might be allergic to them, or especially sensitive to canine smells and sounds; a few might even prefer cats, for some unfathomable reason. Not all dogs are trained in office etiquette: those that are left unsupervised may roam freely, chew on co-workers’ belongings or make a mess on the carpet. Some owners could do with a bit of training, too: many infuriate their colleagues by bumbling away in baby talk to their pets.
What should managers do? Unfettered openness can make the dog-phobic uncomfortable and unhappy. At the other end of the scale, a few big companies like PwC and HSBC have instituted no-pooch policies in recent years. That may ensure there is no barking havoc in the office, but forgoes the benefits of welcoming pets.
The ideal is to seek middle ground. Google, for instance, bans dog-owning staff (“Dooglers”) from bringing in noisy pets and limits furry incursions if other employees are allergic. Beyond a few company-wide rules, such as banning dangerous breeds and ensuring dogs are vaccinated and office-trained, individual departments could be left to decide their own policies in consultation with their teams. Some areas could be designated as pooch-free zones. A dog roster could be agreed among staff.
This approach works only if people feel free to pipe up when they are uncomfortable, in the knowledge that their managers will act accordingly. As it turns out, such autonomy matters as much for dog-owners as it does for their colleagues. A survey of owners done in 2021 by Elisa Wagner and Miguel Pina e Cunha, then both of the Nova School of Business and Economics in Portugal, suggests that taking a pet into the office can become a burden if employees lack the freedom to decide when they can take breaks from their work.
Opening up the office to dogs might seem like an easy way to make the workplace seem more flexible. In fact, it takes a flexible workplace to make a dog-friendly approach succeed.
