A pet bed spawns a pet.
Maybe it could instead spawn a Recruit, and you can talk to the Recruit to "Work Here".
A basic requirement might be a Recruit Bed will not spawn a Recruit unless it is Sheltered, so if you build a small house for a Recruit near some resources, you can "hire" that Recruit to work those resources and then occasionally visit them to collect.
Since NPCs are likely deactivated completely if too far away from the player, this is really only good for having multiple recruits in a location, maybe each of them doing one type of gathering or farming work.
