The slow action on making improvements to architects' and designers' mental wellbeing at work, stems much deeper than ensuring everyone goes home for the day at 5.30 on the dot. It’s a systematic change that involves the general public understanding the value and worth that architects bring to projects and the built environment. It’s a systematic change that means fees are adequate for the work that needs to be done. It’s a systematic change around changing the culture of ‘hard work’.

As the profession works on the more strategic communication of its value proposition, there are most definitely steps that employers can take to better their employee's well-being, and they should do so without delay. But it begs the question, who is looking after them?

Recently, a survey of Australian practitioners was conducted online by Monash University academics Naomi Stead, Julie Wolfram Cox, Maryam Gusheh and Brian Cooper, and Kirsten Orr, Registrar of the NSW Architects Registration Board.

This survey provided the evidence for everything we suspected.

The question now is, how can we work together as an industry, to make change?