“Good work-life balance” is too vague to verify in an interview. A practice can be calm in concept design and overloaded before tender. Another can have busy weeks but protect recovery time. If you want a sustainable schedule, investigate how the team plans, records and responds to peaks.
The RIBA workplace wellbeing practice note treats wellbeing as a practice issue, not a matter of individual toughness. You can translate that into practical questions for a prospective employer.
Ask where the hours come from
Find out which project stages the role covers. A position tied to multiple simultaneous submissions may have a different rhythm from one focused on longer delivery phases. Project type, client approvals, consultant dependencies and the firm’s resourcing choices all matter. A sector or city alone does not guarantee a 40-hour week.
Ask: “What were the last two deadlines this team handled? How much notice did staff have, and what changed after the deadline?” A specific story is more useful than a slogan about flexible working.
Test the resourcing system
Who forecasts workload? When a client changes scope, who decides whether the deadline or staffing changes? Can the team decline extra work or buy help? Is overtime recorded? How is time back approved? A firm may have a written policy but poor authority to use it.
Ask separate people the same neutral question: your prospective manager, a peer and someone who joined recently. You are looking for consistency, not a perfect answer. A team that can name its recent pressure point and what it changed is more credible than one that says it “works hard, plays hard.”
Read the role as a set of obligations
A job that includes client management, design leadership, consultant coordination and drawing production may be four jobs in one. Ask what you own, what you review and what support exists. Compare the answer with team size and project count. A promotion can improve autonomy, but autonomy without capacity can extend the day.
Write a small scorecard after each interview: expected weekly pattern; busiest period; predictability of notice; overtime treatment; ability to take leave; manager response to missed estimates. Mark each item evidence, claim or unknown. This stops a beautiful office or a famous name from replacing due diligence.
Make your boundary operational
If predictable hours are important, say so in terms of delivery: “I can support planned deadlines. I need to understand how the team handles scope changes and recurring weekend work.” You are asking how work is managed, not requesting immunity from all difficult weeks.
Three questions that reveal the real schedule
Ask, “What was the last deadline that required weekend work, and how did the team recover?” The answer distinguishes an exceptional event from a routine pattern. Ask, “When the client changes the brief late, who decides whether to move the deadline or add capacity?” This reveals whether the team has authority to manage scope. Ask, “What proportion of my first three months is on work already in delivery?” A role dropped into an under-resourced live project may feel very different from a planned hire.
Listen for examples rather than adjectives. “We value balance” is a statement of intent; “we reviewed the programme, added a coordinator and moved one submission” describes a mechanism. You can ask to meet someone at the level you would join, and ask how the team actually closes a week. Do not expect a stranger to guarantee every evening. Look for a firm that can explain how it responds when normal plans fail.
Record your own constraints in advance: maximum routine hours, notice needed for travel, frequency of site visits and whether occasional deadline peaks are manageable. A good match is a role whose normal operating pattern fits those constraints.
No outside article can tell you that a specific firm always works 40–45 hours. A better interview can show the process and people behind the schedule.
Compare two otherwise similar roles
Imagine two firms offering the same title and salary. In Firm A, one team owns a project through a long delivery period; managers review workload weekly and a late client change triggers a programme discussion. In Firm B, employees move among several deadlines, but no one can say who reallocates work when priorities collide. Neither description guarantees future hours. It does show which employer has a visible mechanism for protecting them.
Ask each firm to walk through one recent change in scope. Who noticed it, who estimated the extra work, and what happened to the deadline or staffing? Then ask how annual leave is covered during an issue period. If the team depends on one person never being absent, flexibility may disappear when that person is you. Look for the decision process, not the promise of an exact weekly number.
After interviewing, write down what you heard within a day. Separate a policy from an example and an example from your inference. “Overtime is optional” is a policy claim. “Two colleagues took time back after the last submission” is an example. “I think this team will respect my evenings” is an inference that needs more evidence. This simple distinction makes a conversation about work-life balance much more concrete.
Browse current architecture jobs on Jobs.archi and read our guide to architecture burnout and career decisions for a related next step.
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