W e’ve all had bad days at work -- deadlines, tackling logistics and meetings can be tiresome. What if one day, our office doors opened and a pack of friendly, cute and cuddly doggies charged in to bring in some sunshine and relief in our work space?
Meet Rajeshwari Ramachandran, who aims to make this ideal scenario a reality. With over 12 years of experience in human resources, Rajeshwari moved from being a human behaviourist to a concentrating on dogs. The graduate from Tata Institute of Social Sciences left a promising career to make a dog-friendly society and founded the Human Dog Interaction Project.
Using her skills in management, HR consulting, communications and training to make corporate spaces dog-friendly, Rajeshwari’s Corporate Canines Express Programme is making a big difference in offices across the city.
Looking back, Rajeshwari says she got into dog training five years ago when her pups came home. “I wanted to figure out how to work with them, so I underwent dog training with expert canine behaviourist Sherin Merchant in Mumbai. Initially, I worked with pet parents to help them understand their dogs better. But eventually, I realised that to achieve a dog-friendly society, I need to work with people who are on the fence or who are not dog lovers yet.”
One thing led to another and soon she found herself doing programmes in education for children that included encouraging reading around dogs and learning life skills through interaction with these four-legged friends.
“The purpose of the programmes was to help children overcome their fear of dogs and prevent them from getting bitten. In India, a lot of children are scared of dogs and that is learnt behaviour they have inherited from their parents. A future society that is pet-friendly is possible only through targeting children. Secondly, we also want to build compassion in children. The amount of cruelty around us is scary. If we are able to make children compassionate towards animals, over a period of time, their qualities of hatred and anger will come down.”
She adds that from an emotional point of view, fear becomes anger and anger turns into apathy. “Being apathetic is the last thing we want people to be. Dogs are easily the best way to get people to show empathy.”
Another target audience which was largely untapped was the corporate sector, she realised.
“Domestic animals are never part of any Corporate Social Responsibility programmes in any company agenda. Since I come from a HR background, I thought why not leverage on that. I had the right contacts and knowledge.”
That is how Rajeshwari launched the Corporate Canines Express Project.
“Stress in the work place is one of every company’s biggest challenges. And dogs are the best way to de-stress. We do a burst session where we take the dogs in as a surprise and let the employees interact for an hour. It makes a big difference and creates a sense of empathy in people. When you have empathy, collaboration and innovation in the company goes up. Using dogs to tune in empathy in people helps them make an emotional connect since working with dogs takes time and patience. We also do offsite interactions where we split teams into smaller groups that must work with a dog.”
How has the response been? Rajeshwari says they’ve received mixed responses. “There are many barriers to overcome. Not everyone is comfortable. But people are curious. Humanising the work place through dogs and using a living creature to hone in empathy and improve relationships is a big boost to any company. We, of course, have a long way to go and this takes time. It’s challenging but it’s worth it all.”
Her biggest aha moment, Rajeshwari says, is when in a crowd of 100 people there will be at least 20 who have never touched a dog in their life. “And at the end of the programme, they take selfies and say proudly that they’ve touched one. People overcoming their fear and loving dogs is the ultimate goal.”
Looking ahead, Rajeshwari aspires to strive to build compassion in organisations and reiterates: “Society needs empathy and compassion. Somewhere that social quotient is missing. Change at the workplace will lead to change in society. Dogs have the ability to draw people. And they will make a lot of difference in the quality of life.”
Reach Rajeshwari at rajeshwari.09@gmail.com
