Professionally Developing Your Architectural Staff: Why it Pays to Start Early
No one wants to hear the adage, “Always Be Selling.” But reframing the phrase while retaining the concept can be very beneficial to your AEC team. As architects and engineers, we can often be dragged into the details of design while being triggered by the financial realities of our work. One day, after years of getting buried in the technical, we suddenly emerge into leadership roles blind-sighted by the added responsibility of managing a team and developing business for an AEC firm. By providing visibility to the financial concepts related to running a firm early in an architectural designer’s journey, we can mitigate the anxiety and pressure felt by architecture’s rising stars.
Positioning your firm’s younger architects as industry thought leaders, willingly exposing them to the architectural limelight within the first three years of their employment at your firm, can pay dividends in boosting employee retention, interest-to-sales conversions and—you guessed it—firm morale. As the AEC industry moves further away from its Starchitect era and into a more inclusive field of work, younger architectural talent are discovering that real professional development opportunities are one of the greatest motivators of staying gainfully employed. Simply put, professional development justifies the hours AND raises a new generation of leaders who are capable of developing business, ensuring an enduring financial legacy for your design firm.
Here are some simple ways you can start to incorporate professional development opportunities into your firm operations:
Incorporate Staff Meetings with Radical Visibility: Each week, provide a high level report of where your firm stands financially—what projects are gaining, which are dipping, who is over-stretched and under-utilized. By knowing where they stand, your staff will feel a greater affinity with your firm.
Raise Thought Leaders from Within Your Firm: Identify the top-performing talent at your firm across each level of your firm hierarchy (i.e. staff-level designer, project managers, principals and partners). Have 15% of your top performers appear regularly in your thought leadership content, whether it is through ghost-written articles, at expert panels or speaking roles at conferences. No matter where your top talent resides your firm’s hierarchy, you can always find opportunities for them to rise and provide their perspective on AEC issues. (Read: We can help with that!)
Include Junior Staff in Pitch Opportunities:
Define a Feedback System for Networking Events: Ask for a report of tangible takeaways, photos and key people engaged with at networking events your leadership team and staff attend. Create one centralized place in your firm’s administrative documents where these reports live, and have your marketing team monitor and flag them for potential opportunities such as identifying similar events, hosting a networking happy hour at your office and drafting employee spotlight articles.
