[UPDATE] Dog Friendly Office Project: Introducing the Dog Friendly Office Day

Update: Due to the recent announcement of the COVID-19 State of Emergency in Tokyo, The Dog Friendly Office Day has been postponed until further notice. We will post an update once the new date has been decided.

Thank you for you understanding and continued support of free stitch.

Original article as follows:

In the spirit of ‘Enriching the Workplace with Your Dog", we started the ‘Dog Friendly Office Project’ in September 2019. 

To commemorate the launch of the Dog Friendly Office Project, we hold an annual event at the free stitch office called the ‘Dog Friendly Office Day’.

The Dog Friendly Office Day is for all staff who wish to come to work with their pets to enjoy a special day of communication with other staff and their dogs.

As the climate in Japan can be quite changeable and September experiences a lot of wet and humid weather (which may be unpleasant for pets travelling to and from the office), we voted to move the Dog Friendly Office Day from September to May. 

Last year, on May 12th 2020, all of our staff attended a barbecue event to commemorate the launch of the project. We carefully selected a location where pets were able to attend and we also took the opportunity to welcome new staff with their dogs - all while making sure to adhere to COVID-19 safety protocols.

We also ask our staff who bring pets to the office to re-sign and submit the latest ‘Dog Attendance Agreement’ so that they are kept up-to-date with recent developments and changes.  Additionally, we ask all our employees who have dogs to resubmit the latest general vaccination and rabies vaccination certificates for our company records.

Please click here to find out why we require all employees to submit the latest vaccination certificates. 

This year, we plan to hold the next Dog Friendly Office Day again (Date TBD). 

We will keep everyone updated on the details of the event through blog posts and SNS, so please be on the lookout for future posts.

As we are always open to feedback and suggestions from everyone on what would make the perfect Dog Friendly Office Day, so please feel free to complete this questionnaire with any ideas (Japanese only).

At free stitch, we see the Dog Friendly Office Day as an excellent opportunity to review and update our working environment to make it more and more suitable for bringing pets.