The Guides for Equitable Practice use real-world-derived best practices, relevant research, and other tools to help foster equitable, diverse, and inclusive firm cultures and work environments.
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Increasingly, architects and design professionals will be called to lead efforts in finding solutions to many of our society’s most pressing issues. To meet these challenges, as well as the unknown ones ahead, we must have the talent, passion, and creativity of a diverse cohort of students, professionals, and leaders.
The Guides for Equitable Practice, done in partnership with the University of Washington, the University of Minnesota, and The American Institute of Architects’ Equity and the Future of Architecture Committee (EQFA), are a vital part of AIA’s long-term commitment to lead efforts that ensure equity, diversity, and inclusion in architecture—that the architecture profession is as diverse as the nation we serve.
These guides will help you make the business and professional case for ensuring that your organization meets the career development, professional environment, and cultural awareness expectations of current and future employees and clients.
Each chapter includes real-world-derived best practices, relevant research, and other tools to help you address a variety of employment and personnel issues about equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each guide begins with a baseline explanation of its topic, conveying the knowledge and language required to have meaningful conversations with individuals at any level of your firm. The user-friendly layout and short, consumable sections are designed so you can find the content you need easily and quickly.
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The guides make the moral, business, ethical, and societal cases for equity in architecture and provide key insights to help individuals, firms, and other organizations build equity in architecture.
Translating relevant research into actionable practices, each guide defines core topics before presenting information through several lenses:
Each guide contains an Assess section that provides prompts with which you can evaluate your individual, interpersonal, and organizational improvements in equity.
Guide topics include intercultural competence, workplace culture, compensation, recruitment and retention, negotiation, mentoring and sponsorship, advancing careers, engaging community, and measuring progress.
