How we operate

The collective agreements provide the following benefits:

+ Individual salary negotiations plus fixed salary tiers regulated according to seniority

Labour rights and collective agreements

Attracting, retaining, developing, and ensuring the health and safety of all AART employees is the main focus in our organizational development. The Scandinavian countries are by definition attending to secure labour rights and conditions of any staff member through collective agreements and state-imposed regulations concerning employee safeguarding.

At AART we have free union representative elections without management intervention and there is employee representation on two important organisational boards: The Health & Safety Committee and The Collaboration Committee.

In alle three countries - Denmark, Sweden and Norwaya collective agreement is in place and applicable to the majority of the organisation’s staff members (architects, architectural technologists, urban planners, designers etc). Administrative staff holds individual contracts according to local labour and employment law.

+ Pension scheme

+ Working hours regulation and overtime compensation

+ Favourable maternityand paternity leave

+ Holiday regulations

+ Continuing professional development funding

Additionally, AART offers a private health insurance, lunch scheme and monthly shared learning AART+ events to engage and develop a meaningful work life for all staff members. In addition, there is a Staff Association Club arranging social activities in all offices.

In place are also policies dealing with stress, harassment, continuing professional development, salary and hybrid work.

Meaningfulness at work

Annually AART administers a detailed organisational survey called the Meaningfulness Survey (MWQ). The MWQ is an organizational survey that asks employees several questions about meaningfulness at work centred around the four drivers of Purpose, Leadership, Belonging and Personal Growth.

Research shows that experiencing meaningfulness at work is what drives employees to be more engaged, productive, innovative, stay longer with the organization, and experience less stress. With success, AART has completed five MWQ-surveys with an excessive overall score for the entire company between 3.89-4.08 on a scale of 1-5.

The score on belonging is particularly worth highlighting, which during the period of Covid-19 has been strongly decreasing worldwide but in the same period has increased in AART to an impressive overall score of 4.35. The survey results are presented for alle employees and afterwards accessible at the organisation’s intranet.

From the gained MWQ insights, the management board, in collaboration with the Health & Safety Committee and the Collaboration Committee, holds the responsibility to initiate initiatives that can strengthen and develop the organisation. The MWQ survey is combined with questions on physical working conditions as well as psychological working environment when necessary, according to the local Working Environment Acts.

AART annual cycle

A shared annual cycle has been implemented throughout the organisation, which ensures that all colleagues have a yearly salary negotiation, a competence development session and a ‘walk & talk’-session with the immediate manager, along with the more informal daily contact between manager and employee. The annual cycle also contains five town hall information meetings, where the AART management and other organisational key persons inform about the company's market and financial situation, internal policies, MWQ score, the architectural development and other important topics.

Gender equality

The employees at AART is a diverse group. As of June 2023, the staff represents 15 different nationalities of which 57% are men and 43 % are woman. We work for equal career possibilities, and we are transparent towards equal rights and wages. Our 275 staff members are led by a Group Management consisting of 6 members with a gender split of 67 % men and 33 % women. The daily management teams across our six offices consist of 33 persons divided on partners, group partners, associated partners, c-profiles and team leaders, and the gender distribution is 61,3 % men and 38,7 % women.

Being a Scandinavian firm, we ask our employees to speak a Scandinavian language in order to meet our Scandinavian clients on their level. That in mind, we strategically work on being an attractive workplace. Attracting new talents into our work culture and having various nationalities and backgrounds, we see as an added value. Our staff members differ in age and job seniority which is important to us. Our average age is 39,1 years and our average job seniority is 5,13 years.