The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has pledged to drive up workplace wellbeing standards among its registered practices after a survey completed by over 1,450 architectural professionals revealed that long hours and low pay are a common theme for many.
The RIBA Workplace and Wellbeing Report published today is based on the findings of a survey, which took place in June and July 2024, and found 90% of practice employees regularly work overtime, and two thirds of architects work unpaid overtime for no extra pay or compensation.
While unpaid overtime is something of a norm across the industry, young people, and early-career level practice staff, on a lower wage, are more disadvantaged by it than their older, more experienced colleagues. Low wages, combined with unpaid extra hours means that many are not receiving the Real Living Wage and are having to rely on other sources of income to make ends meet.
People with caring responsibilities, typically women, find it difficult to find a balance between the demands of the workplace and their personal commitments and 54% of practice staff say that their work is harming their mental health.
RIBA President, Muyiwa Oki said: “I’m hugely concerned about what this research has unearthed.
“Architecture is such a brilliant, fulfilling career and my experiences have been nothing but positive, so the fact that so many in the profession I love are overworked, underpaid and unsupported is hard to hear, although I do appreciate that the last few years have been challenging for practices and that many have had to cope with rising costs, including salaries, while their profits have stayed the same.
“I’m determined that RIBA should play a major role in helping turn things around so we will be working hard to ensure, first, that our Code of Practice is sufficiently robust and clear on the correct, mandatory standards of employment that all staff working in architecture have a right to expect. We will also be looking at our mandatory training and development for RIBA chartered practices to see if we can embed the principles of fair remuneration and access to flexible working at practice level - in line with many other professions.
“We want to attract architecture specialists from all backgrounds so that our built environment works for and reflects the needs of the wider society, clearly having a working culture that favours more established architects and people who don’t have young children or other caring responsibilities is detrimental to that, so as a membership body we must do all we can to address the issue.”
The RIBA Workplace and Wellbeing research was carried out following a request from members of the RIBA Council. The research draws on quantitative data gathered from surveys of people in practice – both practice owners and employees – and qualitative information from in depth interviews with architectural staff.
