Hiring, Performance Evaluation, and Termination Procedures

How architecture firms handle the employee lifecycle from recruitment through separation, including legal compliance, performance management systems, and documentation requirements that protect both the firm and its staff.

ARE · Practice Management

Overview

Every architecture firm, from a three-person studio to a 500-person national practice, shares the same core challenge: building and maintaining a team that can deliver quality design work while staying on the right side of employment law. The employee lifecycle spans three critical phases, and mishandling any one of them creates legal exposure, morale damage, or both.

Hiring is where it starts. You need to know which federal anti-discrimination laws apply to your firm (Title VII kicks in at 15 employees, the ADEA at 20), how to classify workers correctly as employees or independent contractors under the economic reality test, and whether a position qualifies as exempt or non-exempt under the FLSA. Get classification wrong, and you owe back overtime plus penalties.

Performance evaluation sits in the middle. Consistent, documented reviews protect the firm if a termination is later challenged. They also drive professional development, which the AIA Code of Ethics requires firms to support. Good evaluation systems tie individual goals to firm strategy, track competency growth, and create clear records that show whether performance expectations were met.

Termination is where firms face the highest legal risk. Even in at-will employment states, firing someone for a discriminatory reason, in retaliation for exercising FMLA rights, or without proper documentation can trigger EEOC complaints, lawsuits, and regulatory penalties. NCARB's Model Rules of Conduct go further: an architecture firm found to have violated harassment, discrimination, or unfair compensation laws can face professional disciplinary action on top of legal consequences.

For the ARE, expect questions that ask you to evaluate a firm's hiring, evaluation, or termination decision against the legal and ethical framework. Knowing the rules is step one. Applying them to messy real-world scenarios is where the exam lives.

Essential

Hiring: Getting It Right from Day One Hiring in an architecture firm involves more than posting a job listing and picking the strongest portfolio. Federal and state employment laws create a framework of requirements that apply before, during, and after the hiring process. Anti-Discrimination in Hiring Federal law prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity), age (40 and older), disability, and genetic information. These protections are enforced by the EEOC under several statutes: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008. Coverage thresholds matter. Title VII, the ADA, and GINA apply to employers with 15 or more employees. The ADEA applies at 20 or more.

Professional

Consider a 45-person architecture firm that has been growing steadily. The principals just hired employee number 46 through 52 in a single quarter to staff two new healthcare projects. That growth triggers several compliance thresholds they did not have to worry about before. Scenario: Crossing the 50-Employee FMLA Threshold With 52 employees, the firm is now a covered employer under FMLA. This means eligible employees can take up to 12 workweeks of unpaid, job-protected leave for qualifying family and medical reasons. The firm must display the required FMLA poster where employees can see it, include FMLA information in its employee handbook, and set up systems to track leave usage, maintain health benefits during leave, and restore employees to equivalent positions when they return. A project architect who has been with the firm for three years requests eight weeks of leave after the birth of her child.

TLDR

Federal anti-discrimination laws (Title VII, ADA, GINA) apply at 15 employees; ADEA kicks in at 20; Equal Pay Act covers virtually all employers
The DOL's economic reality test uses seven factors to classify workers as employees or independent contractors; job labels and written agreements are irrelevant if the reality says otherwise
FLSA exempt status requires meeting both a salary threshold ($1,128/week as of January 2025) and a duties test; job title alone proves nothing
FMLA provides up to 12 workweeks of unpaid leave for covered employers (50+ employees); eligible employees need 12 months tenure and 1,250 hours worked
At-will employment allows termination for any lawful reason, but discriminatory reasons, retaliation for exercising FMLA/OSHA/EEOC rights, and contract violations are not lawful
Performance evaluations create the documentation trail that defends termination decisions; contemporaneous records beat after-the-fact memos every time
OSHA Section 11(c) retaliation complaints must be filed within 30 calendar days; EEOC filing deadlines are 180 or 300 days depending on jurisdiction
NCARB Rule 4.6 subjects architecture firms to professional discipline for court-confirmed employment law violations, creating dual-track legal and licensing risk
Departing employees cannot take firm work product without permission, but firms cannot unreasonably withhold copies of the employee's own work

ELI5

Think of running an architecture firm like coaching a sports team. You recruit players, you evaluate how they're performing during the season, and sometimes you have to cut someone from the roster. Each step has rules you have to follow. Hiring (Recruiting Your Team) When you're looking for new people, you can't pick or reject candidates based on things like race, gender, age (if they're 40 or older), religion, or disability. These are protected characteristics, and discriminating against someone because of them is illegal. The rules kick in at different firm sizes. Once you have 15 employees, the big anti-discrimination laws apply. At 20, age discrimination protections add on. You also need to be honest about whether someone is actually your employee or an independent contractor.

AREPractice Management

Hiring, Performance Evaluation, and Termination Procedures

2 min read286 words

Hiring, Performance Evaluation, and Termination: The Employee Lifecycle in Architecture Firms

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