We were quite inspired by the John Lewis model. About four years ago, our partners decided to go down the employee-owned business route. The previous partnership structure in our architect’s practice, which was set up 35 years ago, had four partners and a very traditional business model; the partners were thinking about a succession plan, and they wanted to retain the culture of what is a very creative business.
It took us two years to get the employee-owned business set up. We had a lot of discussions, and Co-operative Development Scotland helped us, which was great. We included quite a lot of our employees in the process, and we realised that employee ownership was the right way for us to go.
Although we have been an employee-owned business for only two years, we have found that it has improved the ethos of the practice. The culture has not changed, but what we have now is very much a holistic model of working, in which we all contribute to decisions. We have a board of trustees, so the shares cannot be sold, and we have a level structure: all our younger and junior architects are on our finance committee or other operations committees, which means that we all contribute to the direction of the business. We are architects, not businesspeople, so when we started on our journey, we found it quite difficult to understand how to run a business—I think that the four partners did that by instinct. Over the past two years, however, we have learned more about business.
We have grown, too. When we started on this road, there were 35 of us; there are now 52 of us, and we find that our younger architects want to stay with our practice rather than jump ship and go to different firms. They can see a future in the business, and they can see that it will not be bought by a big multinational company. We are also very much a Scottish business, and I think that we retain our staff and our talent because of that.
In addition, our business model enables us to innovate and to investigate avenues of architecture that we probably would not have explored in a traditional partnership. We have a graphics team, which decided to investigate the graphics side of our design company, and we now have an interiors team, which we did not have previously. People have the opportunity to ask, “Oh, can I experiment in this direction?”
Like the John Lewis model, we have profit sharing, which is great. As our financial year ends at the end of November, we give our bonuses at Christmas, which is an extra incentive for staff. We do not give a percentage; depending on the year, we might give two weeks’ wages. Obviously that could change, because we have been running for only two years, but the bonus is based on the profits that we have made.
We keep a little bit of the profit share for charitable work. A number of our architects are interested in helping communities abroad, and we send people out to help build housing that is needed, say, or a soup kitchen in Africa. We support a range of charitable ventures.
From a personal point of view, I can say that when you know you own a part of the business you work much harder. When the partners owned the business, we just worked for them. That was fine—they were great partners—but working for yourself really incentivises you. Even little things, like deciding not to print out some drawings because you are paying for the prints, help with the day-to-day running of how you work.
When we told our clients that we were becoming an employee-owned business, they were quite impressed. They thought, “Wow. This company cares for its employees, so maybe it will care more about our project and our staff.” I think that the employee-owned business model has helped us get more business; indeed, the fact that we have increased our staff by so many in two years shows that we are getting more clients and more work.