Practices, including We Made That, Material Cultures, RSHP and Collective Works, discuss their approach to overtime culture, meeting the living wage, and salary ratio between staff.
Creating a just space for people
Responses were assessed by Architecture Declare’s Alasdair Ben Dixon, Mandy Franz, Mark Goldthorpe, Tom Greenall and Mitakshi Sirsi, with input from Regenerative Architecture Index ambassador Immy Kaur – social and civil activist, and co-founder and director of CIVIC SQUARE.
Practice Question 2
Does the practice operate a no overtime culture, meet the living wage consistently, and stipulate a fair salary ratio between staff of all levels?
Front-runner
We Made That
We are committed to delivering public good, and this progressive attitude is reflected in the way we empower our team. This is supported by our dedicated Head of People and recognised through our accreditations, such as Living Wage, and the Mayor of London’s Good Work Standard employer.
Our ‘Transparent Pay and Competencies Framework’ was developed by co-designing and refining the attributes we value as a team. This included 60 hours of team feedback and workshop time, development of 20 core competencies per role, 18 other skills and experience-based competencies, and five engagement and professional development focused competencies.
This is underpinned by a clear culture of healthy working hours, flexible and supported return-to-work journeys, time off in lieu, and actively tracking overtime. In 2023 it was 2.4 per cent overtime compared to an industry benchmark that is ten times that (23 per cent).
Runner-up
Material Cultures
The practice actively discourages overwork. We recognise the organisation’s responsibility to help ensure work is not negatively impacting on the wellbeing of staff, through quantity (overwork) and quality (conditions) of work. We recognise our role in combating exploitative labour practices that are prevalent within architecture, such as the normalised culture of working late to deliver projects, and unfair contracts and policies. We aim to treat overwork primarily as a collective issue of organisational planning and resource allocation, and secondarily as an issue of individual support needs and working habits. We have created an equitable TOIL policy account for occasional unplanned overtime and processes to address and limit future work outside of standard hours. We pay the London Living Wage as a minimum and have a transparent salary framework with no one in the organisation earning more than 1.82 times the lowest paid staff member, significantly below the 3.2 industry benchmark.
Ones to watch
RSHP
Our practice is committed to fostering a fair, balanced, and sustainable work environment. As stated in our constitution, we believe that work should not be an end in itself, but part of a well-rounded life that includes leisure and personal growth. To uphold this principle, we carefully manage our office size and project selection.
We operate a no overtime culture; however, when additional hours are occasionally required to meet deadlines, we ensure that employees receive lieu time in return. We consistently meet and exceed the London Living Wage, ensuring that all team members are fairly compensated. Additionally, we uphold a fair salary structure across all levels, guided by our equal pay policy. This ensures transparency and equity, fostering a supportive and motivated workplace.
Collective Works
We have championed a zero-overtime culture since our inception. Our team were predominantly contractors when we set up, and this helped us build a culture where each hour is paid, and overtime discouraged.
Our team are also given flexibility as standard, with remote working the norm. This meant one of our team members was able to move back to their home country and has been able to work remotely ever since.
The team enjoy the flexibility this culture enables and regularly adapt work around childcare, parental care, education, and advocacy.
This year, we ran a staff consultation about office culture, leading us to introduce regular office days. This has brought us together more, resulting in better collaboration, with more informal learning and social opportunities, while still allowing flexibility. This open dialogue continues to influence our working patterns. We operate internal transparency on salaries and the largest differential is around 3:1.
HLM
Our inclusive Employee Ownership structure reflects our staff-centric approach. We provide collective rewards with our profit-sharing scheme ensuring benefits are spread equitably across the team. All employees are paid above the Real Living Wage.
Our pay structure is regularly reviewed to ensure market competitiveness, and annual salary reviews, gender pay gap analysis and benchmarking maintain fair salaries. Our Lifestyle Package provides cost of living financial support. We operate a no overtime culture. Staff are encouraged to record time to monitor this.
To create surety of employment and resilience, we partner with local organisations, second staff from other practices, or lean into external skill sets to deal with resource fluctuations. Our SMARTBlend policy supports job sharing, part-time, term-time and staggered hours, back-to-work schemes for parents, keeping-in-touch days, career breaks, sabbaticals, and the option to work remotely for 50 per cent of the time – all helping employees maintain a healthy work/life balance.