Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Firm Initiatives

Architecture remains very much a white profession, but time after time, research has shown us that a diverse workforce increases creativity, productivity, debate, and problem-solving among companies. This story is presented across three articles: Part 1 explores the barriers that people of color face in entering the design profession; Part 2 describes organizations addressing some of these barriers; and Part 3, below, looks at firm initiatives to create a more equitable work environment.

Upon reading this series, head over to Hanley Wood University for the potential to earn 1 AIA Learning Unit.

Part 3: Firm Initiatives

This final part of our series highlights proactive efforts by architecture and design firms to address minority underrepresentation in the workforce.

Internships and Externships
As discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, underserved students lacking personal connections and a financial safety net can have trouble landing internships—many of which offer little, if any, pay. ZGF’s Los Angeles office has formalized a summer shadowing program that hosts high school students for three days of activities, such as jobsite visits, model making, and virtual reality exploration. The experience allows students to interact with architects and “get a good feel for what it means to be a part of an architecture firm,” says partner Mitra Memari, AIA.

A member of the AIA Large Firm Roundtable (LFRT) task force on diversity, ZGF has committed to hiring summer interns from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). According to Memari, the task force wants to double the number of registered black architects by 2030. “That’s quite a big challenge, which is why it’s part of the LFRT,” she says. “It’s going to take a large force to achieve that.”

One Hampton University student has already completed a three-month internship with the firm. “We heard from the dean of the school how much she grew from experience,” Memari says. Going forward, ZGF will increase the number of interns to four and, because most of the HBCUs are located on the East Coast, look to offer an incentive beyond the paid internship to offset the cost of airfare and housing. The firm hopes to turn the internships into long-term mentorships.

Several Arup offices in major cities have also reached out to local commuter colleges through the company’s Immersion Days initiative. Students, accepted through an application process, are guaranteed an in-office interview for an internship or full-time position. They also learn more about the industry and attend a résumé review workshop. “Even if they don’t get a job with us either as intern or a graduate, they’ll have better insight on the industry and their own résumés going forward,” says Erin McConahey, a principal and regional diversity advocate based in Arup’s Los Angeles office.

Looking in the Workplace Culture Mirror
Firms striving for more inclusive and equitable work cultures can hire diversity and inclusion experts to evaluate business practices for implicit bias and create training to help eliminate them. Arup’s diversity program grew out of long-standing efforts to reduce gender inequity, also a perennial problem in engineering. The firm’s group leaders “felt it was too limited to only look at gender diversity in the Americas,” McConahey says. “They wanted to be looking at underrepresented minorities and to make sure that all of our staff get the same opportunity for development toward promotability.”

Perkins and Will had undertaken efforts to promote diversity “intermittently” through the years, says director of global diversity Gabrielle Bullock, FAIA, but it took an internal position paper she authored in 2013 to crystallize a coherent diversity strategy. Her writing followed a months-long listening tour at each Perkins and Will office that involved “difficult and uncomfortable conversations” with representative groups, typically comprising 20 to 25 people of all generations, genders, and experience levels. Participants offered feedback that further focused office training programs, developed in conjunction with Washington, D.C.–based Global Diversity Collaborative founder and managing director Sherry Snipes, about improving work–life balance and racial and gender equity.

Individual offices develop programs tailored to their particular needs. “There’s a big difference from region to region,” Bullock says. Recruitment and outreach in Minneapolis, for example, might have a different emphasis than in Los Angeles, where the talent pool is more diverse. “Our international office, for example, has very different issues around diversity, which may be defined by religion or nationality,” she explains. The firm produces an internal Affinity Group Guide on how to organize company-sanctioned groups around a common interest or cultural background. Thus far, the groups have focused on support and mentorship of women and LGBTQA.

Since Perkins and Will has evaluated its business for equitable practice, its Leadership Institute, a yearlong development program to which employees apply, is becoming more racially and gender diverse with each class, Bullock says: “We’re moving in the right direction.”

Since Perkins+Will has evaluated its business for equitable practice, its Leadership Institute, a yearlong development program to which employees apply, is becoming more racially and gender diverse with each class.

Organizing from Within
In 2013, ZGF established its internal Diversity and Inclusion Advocacy Group (DIAG) as a safe space for employees to discuss firm bias and equity and to identify areas for improvement. One of its first projects was a 2014 firm-wide employee engagement survey, which led to the creation of a task force to clarify salary criteria and promotion timelines. “People felt that there wasn’t enough transparency about rules and how and when you can move up,” notes Memari, a founding DIAG member.

DIAG has 18 members across different offices who meet in-person twice a year to “take the pulse of the firm,” Memari says. Membership is voluntary and lasts two years. All onboarding members undergo diversity and inclusion training that covers all aspects of the firm’s multidisciplinary culture.

This year, following a DIAG recommendation to firm partnership, the entire ZGF staff will receive the training, Memari says. DIAG will develop initiatives to promote engagement by each office with their respective communities. In Los Angeles, for example, this means continuing its participation with the local NOMA chapter’s Project Pipeline camp. Each office is tasked with holding a minimum of two community-related activities per quarter.

At the end of the year, DIAG will evaluate progress based on a new system of metrics that examine ZGF culture, statistical diversity, recruitment, retention, education and training, and community outreach and volunteerism. The metrics not only provide a way to chart progress, but also will be critical in guiding future efforts, Memari says.

Establishing Accountability
Since working with an outside consultant in 2012, Arup has intensified its efforts to create an inclusive workplace by focusing on four key areas—recruitment, pay and promotion equity, development, and engagement—and establishing an equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) governance model that “allows us to have the grassroots efforts, which is where the best ideas come from, [as well as] a firm leadership commitment that’s very visible to our region,” says Dawn Lederer, chief human resources officer for Arup Americas. “We want to embed EDI into our operation versus having it be a stand-alone initiative.”

The new structure consists of an EDI executive committee, which sets strategy for the entire North American region and EDI representatives at each office who drive local initiatives and efforts in three areas: awareness and education, community outreach, and visibility or impact for staff. Recent examples include a lunch-and-learn in Arup’s San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., offices and a forum in Los Angeles where staff and leadership shared personal takes on the meaning of an inclusive work culture, and the impact of one’s background and culture on identity and career choices, respectively. Group and practice leaders actively participate both for their own benefit and to show staff support, Lederer says.

Last year, Arup relaunched training to mitigate unconscious bias for all 250 leaders and supervisors in North America. First implemented as a result of the diversity consultation, the training is designed to support not only a merit-based promotion and appraisal process, but also broader inclusion efforts, Lederer says.

Promotion calibration meetings ensure equity during performance evaluations by ensuring that the skills, abilities, potential, and achievements of every employee are discussed by both the HR partners and leadership of individual offices. “There’s a calibration,” Lederer says, “amongst that leadership group to mitigate any potential bias one person might have because they know that person really well.” During salary reviews, a metrics worksheet provides group leaders with a snapshot of pay equity by level, tenure, ethnicity, and gender.

These metrics are shared at regional board meetings semiannually and, moreover, with all staff via a digital report. The report breaks down the data by local office, allowing the New York staff, for example, to see pay equity and promotion metrics specific to their location. A presentation of the results by the group leaders, EDI liaison, and HR rep allows employees to ask questions and suggest where improvements can be made. This year, the firm will add a midyear report.

Prior to college graduation season, employees involved in recruiting receive refreshers on the most prevalent biases, which include favoring candidates with a similar cultural background or college experience; emphasizing academic achievement and extracurricular activities over work or life experience; and not giving adequate consideration to people skills.

Arup’s mentoring circle program assigns six to eight employees to two senior members, who meet with them every other week for three to six months. The circles strategically mix ethnicities, genders, and experience levels to counter a tendency of senior staff to mentor those who culturally, socially, or demographically remind them of themselves, also known as affinity bias, and thus disenfranchising underrepresented groups, who then must build networks and gain sponsorship on their own.

Final Thoughts
With minorities projected to become the majority in the United States by 2045, firms that have embraced diversity, equity, and, frankly, change will have an edge on those that don’t. The general population and the client base are diversifying, says 400 Forward founder and SmithGroup project manager Tiffany Brown, Assoc. AIA. “The way many architects have been doing things the last 40 or 50 years—or even 20 years—is not going to work if you want to continue to practice as an architect.”

Note: This story has been updated to clarify and correct details about Arup’s initiatives.

<< Back to Part 1: Barriers to Entry | < Read Part 2: Designer-Led Solutions

Upon reading this series, head over to Hanley Wood University for the potential to earn 1 AIA Learning Unit.

• Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Barriers to Entry

  The first of a three-part series on how to make the profession more representative and inclusive focuses on obstacles that minorities and other underserved populations face in identifying architecture as a plausible career.

  

• Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Designer-Led Solutions

  The second of a three-part series on improving representation in the profession focuses on programs and entry points offered by industry organizations, nonprofit organizations, and intrepid designers across the country.

  

• Increasing Diversity in Architecture: Firm Initiatives

  The last of a three-part series on improving representation in the building profession describes programs organized by several architecture and engineering firms to diversify their talent pool and future leadership.