Like many professional services, the COVID-19 pandemic required architects and their employers to rapidly transform the way they worked to keep people safe - exerting enormous pressure on both individuals and organisations.

With face-to-face collaboration an important element of architecture work, the complete switch to working from home, although necessary, constituted a significant impediment to the typical work practices in architecture - with many employers grappling with this as Australia emerges from the Omicron surge.

Our survey, the very first of its kind for architects in Australia during the pandemic, sought to gain an understanding of how architects were coping with these tectonic shifts in their work practices and daily lives. What issues were concerning them most and how their views of work had been transformed over the last two and half years.

While some of the issues that architects raised, such as excessive unpaid overtime, overwork, long hours and low remuneration, predated the pandemic, our survey had found a distinct shift in attitudes to flexible working arrangements.

After extended periods of working from home, the survey found that architects now had a strong preference for flexible working arrangements to be included as a permanent feature of their post-pandemic working life.

In part, this was driven by a desire of architects to protect themselves and loved ones from the threat of COVID-19, but many architects cited the benefits of eliminating their commute times, better flexibility to manage family life, and increased productivity as key reasons they’d like the option to increase the amount of time they worked from home.

Architect employers would do well to note that, even as the threat of COVID-19 recedes, the attitude of architects to the way they want to work has transformed significantly and in all likelihood, is irreversible. There is no doubt that flexible working arrangements have become an essential expectation for employees, not just in architecture, but for workers right across the professional services sector.