When you run a business in a creative field like design, it’s crucial to keep your team’s level of inspiration as high as possible. But there are always clients to please and deadlines to meet, making it difficult to squeeze in adequate time for self-reflection and team-building. Sometimes it helps to give your staff members a little boost when you can, whether that’s through an off-site retreat, a company-sponsored happy hour, a title change, or a periodic raise. But a firm's leader also needs to keep the big picture in mind: “Satisfaction from meeting material needs and achieving a career goal—for example, title and promotion—is only short-lived,” says Guangrong Dai, senior director of research at the Korn Ferry consultancy, who specializes in leadership development and talent management. “Meaning and purpose is the ultimate and lasting source of energy and passion.”
We’ve spoken to design offices from around the world to find out how they inspire their employees, from over-the-top field trips to the promotion of personal growth.
Take the team on design-related field trips.
There’s nothing quite like traveling to inspire creativity in a team. You can start small, like simply visiting an architecturally significant site in your home city. Take Los Angeles–based design firm Commune, for instance, which hosts daylong retreats in the summer that include visits to design-related landmarks such as the Schindler House, the Sam Maloof House, and the Gamble House. “We hope that by being exposed to these inspiring locations, our staff learns about history and architectural styles, and about the architect’s or designer’s process,” says principal and cofounder Roman Alonso.
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At Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the company retreat goes one step further—sending some of its staff to a destination with not just a design legacy but also a connection to the staff’s work. “We took 50 colleagues to Charleston in October 2019, the most recent in a series of annual office field trips to places of architectural and urban interest, places where our firm has done work and would like to continue to do work,” said C. Callaway Hayles, a senior associate at the firm. “We had a recent concentration of work in and around Charleston, a city we’ve long considered an excellent and unique example of American architecture and urbanism.”
Create a bonding experience abroad.
A sense of camaraderie is essential on any design team. While you could go the traditional team-building route and do a ropes course, why not take bonding to the next level with an international boot camp? That’s standard practice at furniture maker Timothy Oulton, who sends its new hires to its global showroom in Gaoming, China, for an immersive three-day experience. “We call it boarding school. We run it four times a year, and every single person from the company attends when they first join, from all over the world,” says Oulton. “I went to boarding school as a kid, and I experienced a sense of community, because you don’t just work together, you eat together, you travel together, you live together. You feel part of something, and I wanted that for our company.”
Attendees not only get to become familiar with one another but also with the craftspeople in Gaoming who make their furniture. “They even have a go at some of their work—de-nailing some reclaimed timber, making a trunk handle—they get fully immersed and experience it all firsthand. It’s a real mind-meld,” says Oulton. “And when they get back in the store, they can speak from firsthand experience, which is so authentic.”
Then there’s Snøhetta, whose team-building takes place every few years, when the global architecture firm brings together its studios from around the world for a retreat at the Norwegian mountain for which the company is named. “Besides enjoying a vigorous mountain hike in a beautiful landscape, the purpose is mostly to have fun and to learn about what our global team members are working on,” says Elaine Molinar, Snøhetta partner and managing director of the Americas. “It’s a time for sharing knowledge and building connections, but mainly it’s for creating shared experiences and memories that bring us closer together as a global studio.”
Hire motivational speakers.
At the beginning of 2020, designer Pam Shamshiri tapped writer and designer Mallery Roberts Morgan to give her studio a “State of the Union of Design” address. “When you are part of a design team, working hard in the trenches, it can sometimes be difficult to see the wood for the trees,” says Morgan. “The purpose of the talk was to help the team take a step back—and a deep breath—and give themselves a pat on the back for all the amazing work they accomplished the previous year.”
Host team happy hours or group meals.
A small, but often welcome, gesture to hardworking employees is offering them a free drink or a meal after hours. “As cocktail bar and restaurant designers, we have our fair share of locations to grab an after-work happy hour, which we try to do weekly!” says Paul Basile, founder of San Diego–based Basile Studio. “It’s always a kick to see our designs playing out in real life and enjoying the atmosphere we all had a hand in creating.”
Or you can even socialize while on the clock. “We strategically located the office in the very heart of downtown in a super sociable setting of restaurants and bars that we can regularly use for breakout meetings,” says Morten Jensen, president of architecture firm JRDV Urban International in Oakland, California. “And every Friday we host a two-hour ‘pub lunch’ characterized by lively discussions of culture, politics, urban design, and, of course, architecture. Beer is included.”
Keep a casual dress code.
While there’s a time to dress up—say, for client meetings—some creatives work best when comfortable, which means a casual dress code could be a simple way to keep employees feeling relaxed. “Dressing casually has made a huge impact on our productivity,” says Shayla Copas, owner of Shayla Copas Interiors in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Offer work-from-home policies and plenty of PTO.
Burnout is a problem plaguing offices across industries, and one way to mitigate it is to be flexible with schedules in order to promote a healthy work-life balance. “I keep my team motivated by offering flexible schedules that allow time for self-care, travel, or family time.” says designer Julie Couch, whose studio is based in Nashville, Tennessee. “I also give our team two weeks of time off during the holidays to recharge and celebrate the season with friends and family.”
On the same lines, don’t push your staff too hard. “We don’t encourage our colleagues to work late or on weekends unless they need to do so to meet a deadline,” says Joel Villalon, president and principal at BraytonHughes Design Studios in San Francisco. It sounds straightforward, but it’s a point lost on many offices who promote hustling over well-being, either subconsciously or overtly.
Encourage your staff to pursue other interests with financial incentives.
While paying full tuition for employees to get a master’s degree might not be a feasible option for many firms, even a small gift that can go toward an educational experience can be meaningful. “We give each team member a yearly stipend to take extracurricular classes of their choosing, as long as it’s at least adjacent to the design world,” says W. Brian Smith, founding partner of Studio Tack in Brooklyn. “We’ve had folks take courses in photography, furniture design, or prep courses for licensing exams, for example.”
Leave room for employees to grow their own creative voice.
Core company culture is perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle when it comes to keeping staff inspired. If a designer isn’t feeling fulfilled on a daily basis, morale and creativity could suffer. “Keep in mind that designers and architects got into these fields because they wanted their creativity to be recognized and to have the joy of seeing their idea turned into reality,” says artist and designer Pablo Solomon. “You must show your staff respect, and you must find a way to put their creative ideas into your projects. Nothing stifles enthusiasm and creativity more than constantly being relegated to mundane design work that basically is little more than bringing someone else’s visions into life.”
Compliment your staff.
“It may sound simple, but we tell our staff when they do a good job,” says Paul Murdoch, president of L.A.-based Paul Murdoch Architects. “We are always pushing to excel, which usually involves critiques for improvement, so acknowledging a job well done inspires staff to keep up the good work.”