No surprise really! Want to increase office productivity? Bring a dog to work!

Once again, this Blog is indebted to Naked Capitalism. There in the list of links was a story originally published in The

Economist about some tests to see the effect of dogs in the office. Here’s the link to that Economist story.

http://www.economist.com/node/16789216?story_id=16789216.

Here’s a snippet:

THERE are plenty of studies which show that dogs act as social catalysts, helping their owners forge intimate, long-term relationships with other people. But does that apply in the workplace? Christopher Honts and his colleagues at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant were surprised to find that there was not much research on this question, and decided to put that right.

And the article concludes:

Mr Honts found that those who had had a dog to slobber and pounce on them ranked their team-mates more highly on measures of trust, team cohesion and intimacy than those who had not.

But do read the article in full because the conclusions are quite significant. Once again, the link is below:

http://www.economist.com/node/16789216?story_id=16789216.

By Paul Handover