Employers looking to ramp up productivity in these dog-eat-dog times might consider letting their staff bring Fido to the office, a scientific study published on Friday suggested.
Dogs at work can not only bring down stress levels among their owners, but they can also help make work more satisfying for other employees as well, according to the study in the latest issue of the International Journal of Workplace Health Management.
“The bottom line is that dogs in the workplace can make a positive difference,” said Randolph Barker of Virginia Commonwealth University’s business school, who led the five-member research team.
Photo: AFP
“They may in fact be a great buffer to the impact of stress” on productivity, absenteeism and employee morale, Barker said in a telephone interview from Richmond, Virginia.
Previous studies have underscored the benefits of therapy dogs in hospitals and nursing homes.
However, Barker said his team’s investigation was among the very first to focus specifically on dogs in the workplace and their potential as “a low-cost wellness intervention readily available to many organizations.”
Photo: Reuters
For a week, the researchers monitored day-shift staff at Replacements Ltd, which sells dinnerware from a fast-paced facility in Greensboro, North Carolina, that is the size of seven American football fields.
For more than 15 years, Replacements has allowed its 550-odd employees to bring their dogs to work.
Seventy-six volunteers, from the president on down, were split into three groups: those who brought their dog to work, those with a pet who did not and those with no pet at all.
Saliva samples upon awakening verified that all participants started their workdays with low stress hormone levels.
However, in the ensuing hours, self-reported on-the-job stress levels fell among those with their dogs by their side — and grew for those who either left their animals at home or who had no pet at all.
“The differences in perceived stress between the days the dogs were present and absent were significant,” Barker said. “Employees as a whole had a higher job satisfaction than industry norms.”
In passing, the researchers also found that dogs inspired greater personal interaction — for instance, when staff without pets offered their dog-owning colleagues to walk their dogs.
Although, not everything was perfect. Among the comments collected by the researchers included “some dogs are disruptive, “allergies problems for some” and “dogs should be well-behaved and quiet.”
However, Barker said his team, partly funded by Virginia Commonwealth University’s center on human-animal interaction, is keen to expand its work to include more and different workplaces over greater lengths of time.
They also want to delve into how stressful it can be for dogs to hang around a human’s workplace all day.
The Humane Society of the United States says there are 78.2 million dogs across the country (outnumbered by 86.4 million cats), with more than one in three households owning at least one dog.
Two years ago, it said, researchers at Central Michigan University found that when dogs were present in a group, employees were more likely to trust each other and collaborate more effectively.
To encourage more dog-friendly policies among employers, the Humane Society published a book in 2008 titled Dogs at Work: A Practical Guide to Creating Dog-Friendly Workplaces.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
FUTURE PLANS: Although the electric vehicle market is getting more competitive, Hon Hai would stick to its goal of seizing a 5 percent share globally, Young Liu said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major iPhone assembler and supplier of artificial intelligence (AI) servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s chips, yesterday said it has introduced a rotating chief executive structure as part of the company’s efforts to cultivate future leaders and to enhance corporate governance. The 50-year-old contract electronics maker reported sizable revenue of NT$6.16 trillion (US$189.67 billion) last year. Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), has been under the control of one man almost since its inception. A rotating CEO system is a rarity among Taiwanese businesses. Hon Hai has given leaders of the company’s six