Our work offices are getting more and more friendly and relaxing over time – this is due to a significant shift in the nature of work and paradigms in management. Studies have conclusively shown that pets cause relaxation and productivity increases in the workplace. But how do you go about letting people bring in their pets to the office? You just can’t have it free for all, do you? This article will teach you how to appropriately implement your company’s pet policy to make your employees happy and more productive:
Have Clear and Comprehensive Policies
The last thing you want for your business is for your employees to not understand the rules governing their actions and stating appropriate workplace behaviour. You don’t want unclear rules that only serve to cause confusion in the workplace.
So, make sure you state the rules clearly and concisely, and you let everyone in the team know about it. This includes including policies that might be common sense, for example:
- Don’t allow your employees to bring in pets that make a lot of noise: there are certain pets that make a ton of noise everywhere they go. These pets will cause an uproar in the workplace and make people less motivated and productive. It is just common sense to disallow these types of pets in the workplace.
- Pets might be dangerous should be explicitly banned: recently, unorthodox pets are becoming more and more popular. It might be a good idea to explicitly ban these kinds of potentially dangerous pets from the office. Even certain types of dogs can be dangerous if you’re not careful, it pays to be careful which pets you allow or disallow.
Buy Office Pets?
Instead of allowing every employee to bring in their pets, it might be a better idea to just buy pets specifically for the office. This not only makes the process easier and doesn’t cause any confusion, all your employees together caring for the same pets will create a sense of comradery in the team and make people work together more efficiently.
Of course, you can’t just buy any kind of pet for the office. Having a dog for the office is a lot of work – you need to constantly clean after him, make sure he gets his daily walks, someone needs to take care of him during after work hours, etc. It is a big responsibility, and it might not be worth it.
There are, of course, solutions to this. What about getting an aquarium and fish for your office? Nobody needs to take care of the fish after work. They can easily be left alone during the weekend with an automatic feeder. They don’t mess things around the office and don’t cause any noise. They even make your office look better and more attractive. They are the perfect pets for offices. You have to learn the ropes before getting pet fish, however. And because you usually leave the office empty during the weekends, it might be a really good idea to make sure most of the tasks required to maintain the aquarium are automized: for example, you need to get aquarium heaters and filters to keep the fish warm and the water clean during your absence from the office.
Make Your Office More Pet-Safe
Not entirely unlike when people make their homes children-safe, if you’re going to allow pets into the office, you need to make sure it is a safe environment for them. Dogs and cats, which are the most popular types of pets, usually move around a lot and do all kinds of dangerous things. Make sure your office is safe for pets to traverse before allowing them in. You don’t want an incident on your hand which at best will be a devastating event that will demotivate your workers for weeks and at worst cause you to be sued and lose a huge amount of money.
