Happy Thursday, everyone. I'm Frank Richardson, an organisational psychologist observing the workplace with curiosity and care. Each week, I share insights to help HR leaders better understand the people behind the processes and build cultures where both individuals and organisations can thrive.
This Week in Workplace Whiplash 🌀
A few signals from this week that show how work is shifting, and not always in the ways we expect:
🌍 Global conflict is shaping work more than we think
The International Labour Organization has warned that ongoing conflict in the Middle East could have more lasting impacts on work than COVID-19, particularly through rising economic instability, displacement, and workforce disruption.
👉HRD🇲🇽 “Human Resources” might be on the way out
A proposal in Mexico is pushing to ban the term “human resources”, arguing it reduces people to assets rather than individuals. The shift reflects a broader tension in how organisations talk about (and treat) their workforce.
👉HR Executive💰 The cost of “feeling secure” keeps rising
New data suggests the “magic number” Americans believe they need for a comfortable retirement has climbed again in 2026. Expectations are shifting alongside economic pressure, and the gap between perception and reality is widening.
👉SHRM
Global trends might define the future of work. But on any given day, it is just as likely to come down to something smaller… possibly with four legs.
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I once worked in a busy London hospital in a role that was meaningful, but incredibly intense. There was a tiny, very old dog called Hugo who would wander through one of the admin offices. He could barely stand properly, but he would make his way around the room, letting everyone give him a little pat and, if you were lucky, curl up at your feet for a snooze.
And for reasons I could never quite explain, it helped. On days that felt heavy, it softened something. It gave you a moment to pause, reset, wash your hands, and keep going.
Of course, little Hugo did not change the work itself, but he did change how it felt to do it.
Which is why I was interested to see a recent New York Times piece exploring the rise of dog-friendly offices, as organisations look for ways to make work feel a little more connected again.
Looking back, it is hard to ignore how much something so small changed the tone of the day.
🧠The behavioural science lens
What looks like a simple perk is actually pretty significant when you look at it from a behavioural perspective:
Physiological stress reduction is real, not symbolic: Research has shown that interacting with dogs can reduce cortisol and increase oxytocin, directly influencing stress and emotional regulation. A study of employees bringing dogs to work found lower reported stress across the workday compared to those without dogs. What is often overlooked is that even brief interactions can shift how people re-engage with demanding tasks, not just how they feel in the moment.
Breaks only work if people actually take them: Micro-breaks are strongly linked to improved focus and sustained performance, yet they are often skipped due to workload or implicit pressure. Research shows that breaks embedded naturally into the flow of work are far more likely to occur than those that rely on individual discipline. Dogs create a socially acceptable interruption, making recovery part of the environment rather than another thing employees have to manage.
Emotional states carry over into performance: Affective spillover research shows that mood influences how people think, collaborate, and make decisions throughout the day. Small positive cues, such as interacting with a dog, can improve cooperation and reduce friction in ways that formal interventions often struggle to achieve. These shifts are subtle, but they compound over repeated interactions.
Dogs can act as social catalysts in shared spaces: Research in human–animal interaction consistently finds that dogs increase social interaction and approachability between strangers and colleagues. For example, studies have shown people are more likely to initiate conversations and engage socially in the presence of a dog. In a workplace context, this matters because many collaboration challenges are relational rather than technical, and small shifts in how easily people interact can have a meaningful impact on how work gets done.
🚀What this means for leaders
This isn’t really a case for office dogs. It’s more a prompt to pay attention to what actually shifts behaviour at work:
It’s less about the dog, more about what it’s doing: The value isn’t the perk itself, it’s what sits underneath it. The dog creates small pauses, softens interactions, and makes it easier for people to reset without thinking about it. The more useful question is where those conditions are currently missing from the day-to-day environment.
Signals only go so far: It’s easy to reach for visible perks as a way to improve culture. But if the work itself is overloaded, unclear, or quietly performative, the effect tends to be pretty limited. These moments help, but they don’t replace the basics.
The environment is doing more than we think: What stands out is how little effort is required for any of this to work. No one is being told to take a break or connect more, it just happens. That’s often a more reliable lever than expecting people to behave differently on their own.
Would you want dogs in your workplace?
💬 Final thoughts
The office dog isn’t going to fix your culture. It won’t solve workload, poor leadership, or any of the bigger structural issues.
But it’s hard to ignore how much something as small as patting a dog can change the feel of a day.
Especially when so many of the things designed to make work feel better seem to miss the mark.
How's the depth of today's edition?
If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.
Until next week,
Frank
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