An architecture practice sells design time and judgment. Its drawings are made by young architects working long hours across several projects, so who is on which job, how hours are tracked and why juniors leave decide the year.
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Share your requirementsAn architecture practice is paid for design stages: concept, approvals, working drawings, tender support and site visits. A principal or two win the work and set the direction. Associates run projects. Architects and interns produce drawings, models and presentations, often on several projects together. Draftspeople, 3D artists and site architects support them. Freelance consultants for structure, services and landscape come and go. Deadlines for competitions, municipal submissions and client presentations pull the team into late nights, and the fee is fixed while the hours are not. Studio culture is strong and pay is often modest for the hours. Learn more in the wider professional services hub and the architects and interior design hub.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A design stage can run past its fee, and the team pays with evenings and weekends that no one records.
Many architects spend two or three years in a practice and then move on or go abroad, taking the project memory with them.
Who works on which project is decided in a hallway, so some people are overloaded while others wait.
Hours are guessed on Friday, so the practice cannot tell which projects are losing money.
A deadline can ask for several nights of work, and the same people carry them each time.
Drafting or visualisation freelancers join in a hurry, and the work needs rework when standards differ.
Some work from home and others come in, and nobody has written down what is expected.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Retention and Attrition Management; Performance Management; Organisation Design. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a architecture practices business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Intern, junior architect, architect, senior architect, associate and principal, with the skills and pay band for each.
What this coversHideIntern, junior architect, architect, senior architect, associate and principal, with the skills and pay band for each. See role design.
One sheet of who is on which project and for how many hours, updated every Monday and shared with the team.
What this coversHideOne sheet of who is on which project and for how many hours, updated every Monday and shared with the team.
A short daily entry by project and stage, reviewed by the associate, so overruns show early.
What this coversHideA short daily entry by project and stage, reviewed by the associate, so overruns show early.
Time off or a lighter week after a crunch, and a fair spread of late nights over the year.
What this coversHideTime off or a lighter week after a crunch, and a fair spread of late nights over the year.
Drawing standards, file naming, deadline and review step given at the start, with a named reviewer.
What this coversHideDrawing standards, file naming, deadline and review step given at the start, with a named reviewer.
Skills gained, work wanted and the next role, so the practice learns early who is thinking of leaving.
What this coversHideSkills gained, work wanted and the next role, so the practice learns early who is thinking of leaving. See retention work.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A review process that sees project work and not just hours in the studio.
Levels from intern to principal with clear skills and pay bands.
Understanding why juniors leave and what keeps the good ones.
Hiring architects and interns who fit the studio's design and drawing standard.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
How to spot an unmanageable workload before it becomes an exit or an error, what to look at, how to talk about it and what to change, without guessing.
5 min readRead article
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
A flat structure works until the founder becomes the only route to a decision. How to tell when you have passed that point, and how to redesign without a reorganisation.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Give them real design work early, a visible next level and a fair view of hours. Many leave for learning and respect rather than pay alone, so say what they will learn next.
Yes, if kept light. A daily entry by project and stage shows where fees are overrun and lets you plan the next proposal on real hours.
Put it on a weekly sheet, review it with associates and limit the number of live projects per person. It stops the quiet overload that drives resignations.
Be clear on duration, tasks, stipend and learning, in writing. Confirm the rules with a qualified professional, and treat interns as a pipeline for the studio.
Give a one-page brief with standards and deadline, name a reviewer and check early drafts. Treat good freelancers as a bench you can call again.
We would ask your associates how many projects each person carries, compare logged hours with real effort on one submission and list the juniors who left recently. A level and pay frame with a weekly allocation sheet is a good first job, with scope for your sign-off.
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