I would like to propose an idea that may be one of many but in this case is just one idea to help alleviate the unemployment problem facing both experienced and emerging architectural professionals.
The proposal is for employers of the 10+ size architectural firms to start splitting their new positions into 2-3 16 hour positions working at the same desk but on first second and third shifts.
There are a lot of flaws with this
1. many firms are not set up for safe 24 hour operations
2. 16 hours is not enough to make a living
3. 3 people instead of one person is more work for management
4. 2nd and 3rd shifts may be hard to fill
5. Sharing a desk and computer may be difficult to manage
6. People working the late shifts may have difficulty communicating with project architects or project managers
The list above will be added to as you post your comments but let me give you some reasons to consider this approach despite the above mentioned shortcomings.
Safe 24 hour access is a serious problem late night workers even in a secure building should not work alone so this may require two people working at night, but you could split it Mon-Tue shift one Wed Thur. Shift two and Fri. Sat shift three until you have the staff or the infrastructure in place to safely schedule late night shifts.
16 hours is the minimum or almost the minimum that IDP requires to be able to log credits so this number is the baseline but as we all know architects have booms and bust cycles, having these three folks on your firm can be an inexpensive way to ramp up production periodically. Overtime has monetary and emotional cost one or the other is not avoidable, but having shifts with the flexibility to add hours will help you meet deadlines without burning out your employees or burning through your project budgets with paid overtime. The key is to be consistent with your scheduling so your part timers can hold down another survivor job. The issue of benefits is a sticky one and I would suggest not offering benefits until you are ready to promote them to full time but allow employees who are part timers to buy in to company health insurance at 100% out of their pockets. Another thing to do with insurance is to count days at part time towards the period required to earn benefits typically 90 days. 16 hours is not a lot but for a mom or someone desperate to keep their skills up to date these 16 hours may be the best part of their week.
Additional employees are more work to manage but there are benefits to having part timers, as mentioned before they can step up to help meet deadlines, but they can also step in when an employee is sick or on vacation thus making it easier to schedule workflow. The other possibility is you can use this to test run three folks and promote the one or two or three you think have the right stuff to be full time at your office. Firms also can save a little on overhead by cramming three staff into one desk one software license and one computer.
Filling these positions may be hard in smaller communities but judging by the response rate posted openings receive you may not get someone who knows the entire job but if they know 2/5 of the job then they are earning their keep. The large urban centers and collage towns with architecture schools should have the least trouble filling these positions. The particular shift and the amount of hours may actually be ideal to candidates who are the primary caregivers for children or elderly parents or are students or emerging professionals who are taking the ARE and want part time work while they study. Offering a shift differential may be a way to help fill the late or early morning shifts by offering a two or three dollar per hour difference. But this may not be necessary in our current economic climate.
Sharing a desk is going to be hard but just lay down the law the work station must be neat and clean when you leave for the day.
Communication with project team leaders is probably a big problem but first shift runs 6 am-2:30 pm second starts 2:00 pm and ends 10:30 that leaves the third out in the woods but 10:00 pm to 6:30 am gives a 30 minute break for lunch and a 30 minute overlap to coordinate with the incoming shift. It also corresponds to the service hours most urban transit systems operate. Going home at 2 am is the most dangerous this arrangement avoids the happy hour crowds.
Is this a fair or ideal situation, no but is it better than the current economic malaise where thousands of talented and dedicated people are being sidelined? This is not a universal solution but it offers something for the employees and something for the employer.
Can this be a way forward that keeps people engaged in the profession?
Would you take a 2nd shift part time job if it was offered to you?
For many people this is a non starter and they have t have it all or nothing, but others just want something a start or a chance to stay in even if for two days a week.
This could work - I do it at another office, where we take turns(we have jobs elsewhere) and are collaborating on a large project - with Revit it is easy to do each person leaves text notes in the views to be worked on for the next person to take over. - In big cities, this can be problematic -
part time would be far from ideal, but would beat nothing I suppose.
A downside for employers would be that people would leave the second they got something full time( unless they were a new parent, or caregiver, or had other special circumstances), not a lot of stability.
you need disposable income to generate jobs/investment. if you reduce the net amount of disposable income available, you sacrifice jobs at a wider scale. that's the net effect of a plan like this.
putting any limits on income (in this case hours worked), basically means that you'll end up creating a bias for a highly retrograde economy where consumption outstrips investment.
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this, Peter.
Is the goal to provide several part-time positions in lieu of a full-time position in order to save costs on full-time benefits while also allowing interns to gain work experience?
Or is the goal to have 24-hour operations?
The two things don't really seem connected to one another.
As for the 24-hour operations, international firms already do this, but I'm not sure why anybody else would want to. Right about the time I'm getting ready to go home for the day, my team in Beijing is just arriving at work. As they're closing up their day, our Dubai and London offices are gearing up. London is then closing up just as we're arriving for work. That gives us a true to 24-hour work cycle and enables us to respond quickly to the demands of international projects.
That's not without it's challenges, though. Coordinating that kind of effort is very difficult, communication intensive, and requires a lot of patience on the part of everyone involved. It's certainly not the "easy way."
As for hot-racking seats in a domestic architectural office with multiple part-timers, that sounds like a great way to really mess up a project.
You would have to increase the rate of pay to adjust for the lack of 401k and health benefit plans that usually accompany full time employment I would assume.
Could a part time employment strategy save architectural practice from the recession?
I would like to propose an idea that may be one of many but in this case is just one idea to help alleviate the unemployment problem facing both experienced and emerging architectural professionals.
The proposal is for employers of the 10+ size architectural firms to start splitting their new positions into 2-3 16 hour positions working at the same desk but on first second and third shifts.
There are a lot of flaws with this
1. many firms are not set up for safe 24 hour operations
2. 16 hours is not enough to make a living
3. 3 people instead of one person is more work for management
4. 2nd and 3rd shifts may be hard to fill
5. Sharing a desk and computer may be difficult to manage
6. People working the late shifts may have difficulty communicating with project architects or project managers
The list above will be added to as you post your comments but let me give you some reasons to consider this approach despite the above mentioned shortcomings.
Safe 24 hour access is a serious problem late night workers even in a secure building should not work alone so this may require two people working at night, but you could split it Mon-Tue shift one Wed Thur. Shift two and Fri. Sat shift three until you have the staff or the infrastructure in place to safely schedule late night shifts.
16 hours is the minimum or almost the minimum that IDP requires to be able to log credits so this number is the baseline but as we all know architects have booms and bust cycles, having these three folks on your firm can be an inexpensive way to ramp up production periodically. Overtime has monetary and emotional cost one or the other is not avoidable, but having shifts with the flexibility to add hours will help you meet deadlines without burning out your employees or burning through your project budgets with paid overtime. The key is to be consistent with your scheduling so your part timers can hold down another survivor job. The issue of benefits is a sticky one and I would suggest not offering benefits until you are ready to promote them to full time but allow employees who are part timers to buy in to company health insurance at 100% out of their pockets. Another thing to do with insurance is to count days at part time towards the period required to earn benefits typically 90 days. 16 hours is not a lot but for a mom or someone desperate to keep their skills up to date these 16 hours may be the best part of their week.
Additional employees are more work to manage but there are benefits to having part timers, as mentioned before they can step up to help meet deadlines, but they can also step in when an employee is sick or on vacation thus making it easier to schedule workflow. The other possibility is you can use this to test run three folks and promote the one or two or three you think have the right stuff to be full time at your office. Firms also can save a little on overhead by cramming three staff into one desk one software license and one computer.
Filling these positions may be hard in smaller communities but judging by the response rate posted openings receive you may not get someone who knows the entire job but if they know 2/5 of the job then they are earning their keep. The large urban centers and collage towns with architecture schools should have the least trouble filling these positions. The particular shift and the amount of hours may actually be ideal to candidates who are the primary caregivers for children or elderly parents or are students or emerging professionals who are taking the ARE and want part time work while they study. Offering a shift differential may be a way to help fill the late or early morning shifts by offering a two or three dollar per hour difference. But this may not be necessary in our current economic climate.
Sharing a desk is going to be hard but just lay down the law the work station must be neat and clean when you leave for the day.
Communication with project team leaders is probably a big problem but first shift runs 6 am-2:30 pm second starts 2:00 pm and ends 10:30 that leaves the third out in the woods but 10:00 pm to 6:30 am gives a 30 minute break for lunch and a 30 minute overlap to coordinate with the incoming shift. It also corresponds to the service hours most urban transit systems operate. Going home at 2 am is the most dangerous this arrangement avoids the happy hour crowds.
Is this a fair or ideal situation, no but is it better than the current economic malaise where thousands of talented and dedicated people are being sidelined? This is not a universal solution but it offers something for the employees and something for the employer.
Can this be a way forward that keeps people engaged in the profession?
Would you take a 2nd shift part time job if it was offered to you?
For many people this is a non starter and they have t have it all or nothing, but others just want something a start or a chance to stay in even if for two days a week.
So what do you think?
Look forward to a lively but civil discussion
Over and OUT
Peter Normand
This could work - I do it at another office, where we take turns(we have jobs elsewhere) and are collaborating on a large project - with Revit it is easy to do each person leaves text notes in the views to be worked on for the next person to take over. - In big cities, this can be problematic -
Third shift part time architect? That sucks.
anyway- 3 people, 16 hrs/wk. each = 48 hrs= M-F 8am -6pm (ish)
part time would be far from ideal, but would beat nothing I suppose.
A downside for employers would be that people would leave the second they got something full time( unless they were a new parent, or caregiver, or had other special circumstances), not a lot of stability.
Architecture isn't just about production, I say no way.
"Over and OUT
Peter Normand"
really? ugh
the OP is beyond misguided.
you need disposable income to generate jobs/investment. if you reduce the net amount of disposable income available, you sacrifice jobs at a wider scale. that's the net effect of a plan like this.
putting any limits on income (in this case hours worked), basically means that you'll end up creating a bias for a highly retrograde economy where consumption outstrips investment.
less investment = just what we need. except not.
gg.
read a book.
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with this, Peter.
Is the goal to provide several part-time positions in lieu of a full-time position in order to save costs on full-time benefits while also allowing interns to gain work experience?
Or is the goal to have 24-hour operations?
The two things don't really seem connected to one another.
As for the 24-hour operations, international firms already do this, but I'm not sure why anybody else would want to. Right about the time I'm getting ready to go home for the day, my team in Beijing is just arriving at work. As they're closing up their day, our Dubai and London offices are gearing up. London is then closing up just as we're arriving for work. That gives us a true to 24-hour work cycle and enables us to respond quickly to the demands of international projects.
That's not without it's challenges, though. Coordinating that kind of effort is very difficult, communication intensive, and requires a lot of patience on the part of everyone involved. It's certainly not the "easy way."
As for hot-racking seats in a domestic architectural office with multiple part-timers, that sounds like a great way to really mess up a project.
You would have to increase the rate of pay to adjust for the lack of 401k and health benefit plans that usually accompany full time employment I would assume.
it seems like it would be way easier to hire one full time person than split that same person's work 3 ways and coordinate the same work 3 time a day
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