Towards a new ethics - A guide for architects
HAPPY BUILDER
What is the purpose of work?
Is the purpose of work to do your job and then to go home? Perhaps we should demand more from our jobs. Should we leave our jobs better and happier people than when we first started them? Should it be the responsibility of workers to expect personal growth at the places they work and also the responsibility of employers to create the conditions for this to happen? With advances in artificial intelligence(AI) and robotics society is going to have to readdress the reasons of why we work and how we benefit from it on a personal and societal level.
Challenging how we judge architecture
Let’s say that many of the architects at a particular firm work in bad conditions, could we say that any of the architecture coming out of the office is good architecture? Can we say the same for the builders who work on building sites? Should we be judging buildings by the final physical product only, or is there another way of judging a piece of architecture that also takes into account the mental state of the people that built it? Should we judge a building by how good or happy the people are who worked on it?
Happiness as an effective tool for good architecture
Must an architect suffer if he or she wants to create good architecture? A recent study at the University of Warwick showed that employees are 12% more productive and will work harder if they are happy at work. This indicates that workplaces can invest in keeping their employees happy without hurting the balance sheet or having a negative effect on quality.
Things architecture practice can do to help
There are many different things an architecture practice can do to help develop its staff and wider community for the better. Here are a few.
1 Morality breaks
Why not introduce a 20 minute afternoon ‘morality break’ where staff take a break from work and think about how they might improve as a person or take action on this theme. The time might be spent helping another person in the office who may be struggling with a work related problem, it could be reflecting on a poem about forgiveness, apologising to a colleague who you snapped at earlier in the day or even calling your mother.
2 Employ a work therapist
Employing a therapist that staff can speak to in confidence about problems they are having at work or home can be hugely beneficial. The therapist will also be in a good position to help the individual staff member on their journey to improve as a person.
3 Help employees volunteer
Allow staff a number of hours of paid leave a year to volunteer for a charitable cause that benefits society. Charity Age UK tells us that 1.9m older people often feel ignored or invisible and that loneliness can be as harmful to our health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day - what if an architect decides to use their time befriending lonely people through the charity on their volunteer days. Can this community engagement help the individual and the architecture practice become better at what they do?
4 The body
Architecture firms can encourage staff to get up and walk around every 30 minutes to reduce the health risks associated with sitting down for long periods of time(sitting is the new smoking!). Desktop reminders can automatically inform employees when it is time to get up and walk around.
Two hour lunch breaks can be awarded to employees who engage in a physical exercise activity during their lunch break. Exercise increases endorphins and other feel-good brain chemicals while it also reduces the levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline in the body. All of this makes for a happier and more productive worker.
Firms can recommend to staff that they should have sufficient sleep before going into work where possible, 7-9 hours is recommended by the Sleep Council and the National Sleep Foundation. If employees have trouble sleeping then the firm should be available to help. There is a lot of research that suggests that how much sleep we have is linked to our overall happiness and good health.
5 Educate yourself
A lot of research has been done in the area of how to make employees happier and how to help them develop as people. Architecture practices need to carry out their own research and invest time in learning from this knowledge base. Architecture firms are well placed to be the pioneers in this field.
6 Architecture for all not the few
Routes into architecture practice are becoming more and more difficult as tuition fees go up and the 'lion pit' culture of the educational process and work environment puts many good people off. There are many things architecture practice can do to help make the profession more accessible to a wider group of people such as providing internships and sponsorships for promising young students who might not otherwise have the necessary financial support or contacts to enter the profession.
We must also do work to help the older generation, who have a lot to offer the workplace. Architecture practices should actively fight against age discrimination. A practice could for example provide internships and sponsorships for retired people who want to get back into the workplace and need experience.
What next?
Employers should keep reviewing their relationship with their employees and get the basics right. Give employees relevant responsibility and respect, try to understand them as people, be honest to them and work to their strengths. Try to create a pleasant environment for employees to work. Most of the basic tried and tested management strategies for keeping employees happy are free.
Being an architect is a great profession that can give a huge amount of joy and satisfaction, not only to the architect but also to clients, users and the wider world. If we place good ethics and respect at the heart of the architectural process, the outcome might be something the whole world will benefit from.
August 2018