At H+W, we understand the importance of a vibrant and inspiring office culture. Just as every set of construction documents sets the stage for an exceptional building, our office culture is the blueprint that leads to creative, innovative, and meaningful work. In this blog post, we'll explore the key ingredients that make up our “cool” and unique office culture, offering you insights into how to create an environment that fosters productivity, collaboration, and employee satisfaction.
1. Open and Collaborative Spaces
Open spaces are at the heart of our office culture. We believe in tearing down the walls, both literally and figuratively, to encourage spontaneous interactions, idea-sharing, and collaboration. Our office layout is designed to facilitate conversations and create an atmosphere where employees feel comfortable working together. The result? A dynamic flow of ideas and problem solving. The open space allows everyone to both share their sticking points and contribute to the problem, creatively finding a collective solution. We also have a variety of different spaces for different office tasks. In our new space we’re exploring the idea that the physical shape of a workspace can better support different types of work, creating adaptable and stations for the variety of different work styles. As remote work has become more common, we’re committed to holding on to the practice of in-office work because it allows for more one-on-one mentoring, spontaneous collaboration, and unscheduled conversations.
2. Flexibility and Work-Life Balance
We're firm believers in the concept that work shouldn't feel like a burden. Our flexible work hours empower our team to find the right balance between work and life. We really try to enforce the 40-hour work week; adjusting schedules and expectations to prevent our people working 50- or 60-hour weeks. While we encourage everyone to be in the office when they can, we have the capability to work from home, allowing our people flexibility for life’s demands. At the same, we don’t expect anyone to answer emails or calls outside of working hours. We trust our employees to manage their schedules while maintaining a strong commitment to their projects and clients. This freedom fosters a sense of responsibility, enhances work satisfaction, and promotes overall well-being.
3. Professional Development
Personal professional growth is central to engagement and work performance. Our culture encourages continuous learning and development. We support workshops, seminars, mentorship programs, and cultural groups (such as the local and national AIA, the Cincinnati Architecture Mentor Program, Kentucky Rural-Urban Exchange, NOMA,) to help our employees reach their full potential. We've found that investing in our team's skills not only benefits them but also elevates the quality of our projects. We also support our employees’ outside-of-work interests and passions, whether it be on a board of directors, pet projects, or just general community engagement. We believe that supporting our people in their passions will let their passion shine through in their work.
4. Employee Wellness
We believe that a happy and healthy workforce is a productive workforce. To support the well-being of our team, we provide full health benefits at no cost to our employees—you heard that right. It’s a benefit we started providing a long time ago and we’ve found it removes a mental burden when our employees don’t have to worry about the health of themselves and their families. We also have unlimited sick time, to encourage our employees to stay at home when they’re sick. They can spend their energy getting well without worrying about using PTO to recover and stay well. Removing these mental and physical obstacles benefits us all and motivate everyone to take care of themselves to do their best work.
We also make our team’s mental health a top priority by giving everyone the chance to influence the work environment – we let them pick their favorite snacks (no matter how “unhealthy” it may be), we collaborate on playlists so that everyone gets to influence the music, and we encourage everyone to set their own working hours (with proper communication). We also spend a lot of time and effort making sure that we are accommodating the needs of the individuals. This year alone, we have conducted several studies on how people are using our space currently, and how they WANT to be using our space in the future. We spend a lot of time here at the office, and if we’re not happy with how the space is working, that doesn’t work for us. For instance, we’ve switched to several inter-connected speakers so that people can adjust the music volume individually. Happy and healthy employees are more productive and creative people, and when our people are happy, so are their clients.
5. Celebrating Diversity and Inclusion
Diversity and inclusion are not just buzzwords for us; they are fundamental principles of our office culture. We celebrate the uniqueness of each team member and actively promote a diverse workforce. We recognize that diversity is more than just race. It encompasses age, gender, neurodivergences, orientation, religion, disability and so many other factors. We are very cognizant of these different perspectives and welcome each opportunity within each of our employees to help us broaden our worldviews and challenge our internal biases. This approach leads to a wide array of viewpoints, ideas, and experiences, contributing to our design excellence. And it is a cause that we’re very passionate about, as can be seen in our Cincinnati Business Courier article. It’s important to us to make sure that our employees feel comfortable to be themselves at work, and know they have our full support to be their individual selves; because culture is about the knowledge of safety and support from your co-workers, peers, and bosses.
We also love promoting the architectural field outside of our office! We want to make the profession more approachable to everyone, so we have partnered with a variety of organizations (CAMP at UC, Esperanza in Covington, and NOMA-OH) to bring people who might not have the opportunity into our space to learn about architecture and what makes architecture great.
7. Creative and Fun Inspiration
Inspiration is everywhere at H+W. Our office is adorned with architectural inspirational photos, badminton rackets, and thought-provoking art—most of which was produced by our team members! We encourage everyone to contribute to the office art; the visual stimulation serves as a constant source of inspiration for our team, sparking creativity and pushing the boundaries of our designs while maintaining a fun vibe. Regular design charettes are also a fun and creative way to challenge our design skills. Creativity and Fun are two of our core values, and we embrace them daily. Our friends over at Pella gifted us a pack of indoor snowballs that quickly became our favorite way to break up a quiet afternoon. And since they don’t melt, we can keep the fight going all year round!
8. Team-Building and Fun Activities
Building a cool office culture involves fostering strong relationships among team members. We organize team-building activities, outings, and social events that create bonds beyond the workplace, and we let our employees lead the way. A connected team is a more motivated and cohesive one. We have regular game nights, movie nights, and happy hours together. We also like to encourage everyone to share their outside interests, so we recently went candle-making at the Candle Lab to experience our co-op Dylan’s hobby. Making sure everyone feels like they’re valued is a high priority for us. Each one of our employees is encouraged to propose an event or activity that means something to them not because it’s something we feel like we “should” do, but because we like to experience the things that matter to our people. This extends not only to our employees, but to our clients, friends, and neighbors, especially the ones that indulge us with our annual badminton tournament. This event is one of our favorites because we can just cut loose with our favorite people (that’s you) and be silly one afternoon in June….and sometimes September, depending on who we can find to challenge in the fall.
Ignore those faces - It’s a thought provoking and hard game!
A “cool” office culture isn't just a nice-to-have but an essential component of our work at Hub+Weber. Over 50 years, we've discovered that an open and collaborative environment, and emphasis on work-life balance, professional development, employee wellness, diversity and inclusion, creativity, fun, and team-building activities are the building blocks of our thriving culture. We invite you to consider these principles when crafting your own unique office culture, as it can lead to a happier, more productive, and more innovative workforce.
If you're looking for design inspiration or architecture expertise and want to work with a cool team, don't hesitate to reach out to us. We're here to help you achieve your vision and create spaces that inspire.