* The firm values profit over adhering to any kind of design philosophy. Designers at Gensler typically do not have a strong point of view on how they think a building should look or feel. What the client wants is what will be built. * Gensler has gone to great lengths in recent years to position itself as advocating for social good, but continues to work with clients who are without question politically, socially, and environmentally harmful. The firm’s answer to challenges on this point is that it hopes to influence their decisions for the better, which happens rarely. Generally, Gensler would rather not rock the boat and will do anything to ensure future work with a client. Any advocacy and positive impact is thus limited. * Gensler will bend over backwards for any client regardless of how poorly they treat the firm and its employees. In theory this is a great strategy for preserving client relationships, but it takes a heavy toll on employees—particularly junior employees. I witnessed several situations in which senior management was sheltered from or unaware of how poorly clients were treating Gensler employees, and as a result pushed to preserve the unhealthy relationship with the client. * The firm’s return-to-office philosophy is outdated and deceptive. It doesn’t take much effort to see through the rhetorical spin it uses. Office building developers represent an outsized portion of the firm’s profits, so Gensler is doing everything it can to keep the sector active; it’s simply too valuable as a cash cow. As a result, the firm’s messaging and research “findings” on the topic are carefully massaged to advocate for the physical office and disparage the concept of working from home. It’s pushing an idea that simply isn’t true; junior, mid-level, and administrative staff all agree on this, but senior leadership is blind to the reality. Policies resulting from this mindset include forcing employees back to the office four days per week, in spire of the fact that employee surveys indicate a desire to work from home more than this. With each passing year post-Covid, Gensler seems to be losing more legitimacy as a thought leader on the topic of work. * The Gensler Research Institute routinely suppresses findings that run counter to the firm’s point of view, particularly on return-to-office strategy. Its publications demonstrate a poor understanding of statistics and use sloppy survey methodology. The charts and graphs are often unreadable, and reported “findings” are out of line with what the data actually show. Conclusions will often be reported based on differences in averages that are not statistically significant. The Institute needs more staff and more rigorous practices if it would like to be taken seriously. * Gensler routinely implements mass layoffs as a means of balancing the books. This has created an environment in which even high performing employees feel like they need to watch their backs and do not have secure employment moving forward. Interpersonal trust at the firm is low. Leadership will continually boast about how the firm is having its best era ever in terms of financials, and then proceed to lay off 10-20% of staff in some offices based on the claim that this is unavoidable due to financial pressures. * The firm does an extremely poor job of communicating when it elects to perform layoffs. Laid off employees are typically blindsided by the news and given no chance to say goodbye to their colleagues, as their communications apps are immediately disabled. Fellow colleagues are also usually not informed that the layoff happened, so situations have arisen where entire teams are laid off and have clients reaching out to the firm wondering where their team is and why it has gone silent. It’s extremely unprofessional and embarrassing for the firm. * The firm would benefit from learning best practices from other industries, particularly when it comes to management and communications. Because the firm is run by designers, its leadership applies design thinking (particularly critiques and constant edits) to every conceivable task. This is great for project work but leads to excessive waste when it is applied to internal communications and management. * Example: Marketing staff are supposed to focus on winning new work. But instead they are often tasked with assisting leadership with creating internal presentations that span 10-15 versions—a highly inefficient use of their time. All around the firm, countless hours are spent polishing graphics for internal communications packages that will never be seen outside the firm; this level of obsession fosters frustration among junior staff and administrative staff. What I would say to Gensler’s leadership is that not everything is a design project, and sometimes far more could be accomplished by focusing on clear messaging instead of appearances. * Pay is lower than that of some competitor firms in spite of Gensler insisting to its employees that it pays the most in the industry. I am aware of several cases in which Gensler employees were laid off only to be picked up by competitor firms weeks later. These employees joined the competitor firms with the same role and title as they had at Gensler, but were sometimes compensated as much as 50% more. * Employees who are not architects or designers (e.g marketing or admin staff) should be aware that pay in the design industry is markedly lower than that of many other industries where they could perform comparable work.
