Director's insight: Creating a positive office culture

We sat down with the director, Shelly, to understand more about the office culture he has created at 24/Three and the importance of finding the right team.

You’ve expanded quite quickly this year – how have you been able to create a tight knit team in a short space of time?

With a lot of dedication to finding the right people.

The recruitment process can be difficult – you have to find the right time to hire. It’s a balance between hiring someone just before a big project but risk them being too late to help, or hiring well in advance but risk the project falling through. Luckily we secured a large project in Cambridge, which were all long term projects, so we started a recruitment drive – with short bursts of a couple of weeks each quarter where we would focus our time recruiting. Initially, with us being a small practice of only 5 at the start of 2024, it was difficult to attract people without using recruiters. In the second quarter, I reached out to colleagues I had worked with previously who had seen progress in the business online. We also started getting our bases set up in Newark and Northampton, which helped us hire easier as people saw a presence.

Working at different scales and type of businesses in my past from architects to developers, the bit that I enjoyed seeing flourish in the business was the people and creating the right team around you – there's a lot that goes into finding the right people for the right seat or role. I’m not the brightest or an award-winning architect, but people that I know who have started successful businesses just worked hard and that was the one key ethic that I wanted from everyone. The other thing we really look for is the right personality and how that individual fits into the team socially. We can teach you the skill if you have the right work ethic and personality. I can say with confidence that we have that in our team.

It is clear that a positive office culture is important at 24/Three – what do you think contributes to this?

Being comfortable is the big thing, no matter what level you’re at, from junior assistant to associate. I wanted to create a work environment where people don’t feel intimated. Most of these things I’m trying to implement at 24/Three are lessons I’ve learnt from my previous jobs (be that negative or positive). I wanted to create a business on the right footing, where people feel comfortable approaching their senior team or where juniors aren’t afraid to ask questions. We put a process in place to ask those questions in an efficient way with our monthly 1-1 meetings where each employee has a wellbeing catch up with a more senior team member, allowing them to bring up any issues or concerns they have, both in or out of the office.

Most of our team have come from other older practices, with set ways of doing things, and they were wanting to move jobs for a new challenge or to better meet the work/life balance they were looking for. We really value the social aspect of work and also the importance of a positive wellbeing on productivity. We encourage people to leave work on time and take their full lunch breaks – we sometimes play ‘Uno’ together over lunch and there’s a running leaderboard in the Northampton office! As we have two offices and we work collaboratively across both, we also try and do regular away days where we all come together. We did a walk around Chatsworth with all the dogs in the summer, which was great just to get out of the office and catch up.

Having a group of individuals who work hard, are welcoming, are open to ideas, and share their knowledge with others is key. We’re a diverse business in terms of gender, age, race, and experience, so having an open mindset allows us to have a wide range of people that join us. But also, those kind of people tend to get along easier, which is important.

Thank you Shelly for your time again!