just wondering if there are people out there who have worked for both a more traditional office vs an employee-owned office. Was there any difference in the kind of work produced and culture? Do you feel that there are benefits/drawbacks to the different firm structures?
No difference in work produced. The ownership of the office has no bearing on how the firm manages projects. I've worked for traditional top down firms where it was an open, collaborative design culture. I've worked in employee owned firms where there was a rigid design process where everything came from the top (director of architecture).
Employee-owned offices (e.g. worker co-operatives) have benefits and drawbacks, and in an architectural setting, those benefits and drawbacks would be the same as any other employee-owned business: typically higher worker retention rates due to the incentive of ownership/profit retention for workers, but coming with the need for strong vetting as to who works for / owns the company, due to the strong possibility of poisoning the business structure with those who may not actually care about (or are actually opposed to) the values that a co-op provides. That's the basics but the structure can actually get very complicated very quickly.
The major barrier in a co-op for architecture offices (as with other professions) is managing liability insurance. If all worker-owners are also Architects (i.e. licensed professionals) then it's okay, but it can become hairy when not all owners are licensed, who may be doing work that's supervised under a licensed professional, because of how E&O policies typically work out.
What Chad said - I've worked in both, as well as two that were in the process of moving from one to the other, and have observed no difference in operations. We shall see how much difference it ultimately makes in my retirement savings.
Aug 21, 20 1:44 pm ·
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employee-owned vs traditional top-down offices
just wondering if there are people out there who have worked for both a more traditional office vs an employee-owned office. Was there any difference in the kind of work produced and culture? Do you feel that there are benefits/drawbacks to the different firm structures?
No difference in work produced. The ownership of the office has no bearing on how the firm manages projects. I've worked for traditional top down firms where it was an open, collaborative design culture. I've worked in employee owned firms where there was a rigid design process where everything came from the top (director of architecture).
Employee-owned offices (e.g. worker co-operatives) have benefits and drawbacks, and in an architectural setting, those benefits and drawbacks would be the same as any other employee-owned business: typically higher worker retention rates due to the incentive of ownership/profit retention for workers, but coming with the need for strong vetting as to who works for / owns the company, due to the strong possibility of poisoning the business structure with those who may not actually care about (or are actually opposed to) the values that a co-op provides. That's the basics but the structure can actually get very complicated very quickly.
The major barrier in a co-op for architecture offices (as with other professions) is managing liability insurance. If all worker-owners are also Architects (i.e. licensed professionals) then it's okay, but it can become hairy when not all owners are licensed, who may be doing work that's supervised under a licensed professional, because of how E&O policies typically work out.
What Chad said - I've worked in both, as well as two that were in the process of moving from one to the other, and have observed no difference in operations. We shall see how much difference it ultimately makes in my retirement savings.
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