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Company announcements of reinforced return to office (RTO) rules often spark vociferous protests from employees who have come to cherish more flexible working arrangements. But a recent report suggests employers ordering staff to spend more time back in the cubicle also provoke dissenting barks, meows, and threats to quit from many staffers who work at home in the company of their beloved pets.
The risk of loud, even dogged RTO pushback from animal loving workers became clear in a recent report by Employee Borderless, a research platform that reviews remote work service providers. It noted that 71 percent of all U.S. households — or 94 million in all — now own a pet, up from 65 percent in 2015. More significantly for workplace harmony and stability, 67 percent of employees who live with a dog, cat, parrot, Guinea pig — or the potbellied variety — and other domestic critters said they’d find a new job if their employer decided to reduce or terminate their remote working arrangements.
Similarly, 41 percent of pet owners questioned said they’d take a cut in pay in order to continue working alongside their animal companions, and 78 percent said they’d reconsider their office job if dogs were banned from company premises. About 60 percent of respondents said they’d take themselves for a walk away from work that created conflicts in caring for their pet.
There are reasons to fear the bite of those warnings would be worse than their bark for employers. For starters, the report cited research showing pet owning worker surpass colleagues who don’t have animal roommates in many performance metrics.
Take for example the 91 percent engagement rates of pet owners compared to 65 percent for critter-less colleagues. The same gap exists for productivity rates of 88 percent versus 65 percent, and intent to remain with employers — so long as remote working options allow them to stay with Fido and Sheeba — of 88 percent versus 73 percent.
Similar differences in favor of the animal cohabitation crowd were found in work-life balance, commitment to the company’s mission, and workplace stress reduction.
Pet owning workers offer other advantages to employers. Those include better structuring of their workday, heightened focus on work, and more clearly defined times and duration of breaks they take.
“What happened between 2020 and 2025 wasn’t just people getting pets,” the Employee Borderless report said. “It was millions of workers discovering they could structure their days around both work and pet care, leading to unprecedented productivity gains. They learned to take walking meetings, use pet breaks for mental resets, and leverage the calming presence of animals during stressful projects.”
That latter effect also reduces employer costs for pet-owning workers’ mental health care.
More than 90 percent of surveyed employees with fur babies said they have lower levels of stress when their animals are around. That benefit is higher within remote working situations.
Even though companies like Amazon and Google have very accommodating pet policies, polls found 89 percent of owners said their mental health was better while working at home with their animals, compared to 53 percent saying they got the same effect in traditional offices that allow critter companions.
The upshot, the Employees Borderless report says, is that in addition to the shouts, yelps screeches, and occasional whinnies that tighter RTO mandates will draw from employees with pets, business owners may risk losing valuable workers by restricting their remote work permissions.
“Companies issuing return-to-office mandates will face resistance from pet owners, with the majority saying they would rather change jobs than give up remote work,” it said. “This is leaving them at risk of losing their happiest and most productive workers.”
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Bruce Crumley
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