In today’s Best for NYC Challenge post, I want to discuss an effect of our company’s size. As I’ve mentioned before we are bigger than it feels to me: we’re bigger than the median company in both the US and New York State and we’re bigger than a lot of our architecture-firm clients, but we’re still small enough to hold our staffing meetings sitting around a table.
A lot of government mandates are linked to firm size. For examples, the prohibition on workplace discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 applies to firms with 15 or more employees. There is a reason for this exemption – with only a handful of people, individual hires can greatly affect a small firm’s demographics – but there’s also no reason that small firms can’t try to meet the requirements. We do not discriminate, of course, but we have tried to maintain a diverse workforce in the spirit of Title VII. It has proven quite easy in practice to have a diverse group of employees who are also good at their jobs; it has also proven beneficial to the firm to have different points of view discussed.
In short, just because we’re exempt from a regulation doesn’t mean we have to act exempt. And if we believe in the regulation’s goal, why should we?
