Social

The built environment powerfully shapes human experience, health and community. At Hassell, we believe that meaningful design must prioritise social outcomes that enhance people’s lives and foster inclusive communities. 

Our Sustainability Framework’s Social category focuses on three essential principles: Health and Wellbeing, Social Value and Equity and Inclusion. These principles guide us in creating spaces that promote physical and mental wellness, deliver lasting community benefits, and ensure accessibility and cultural relevance for all users. 

By examining our social impact across projects, we highlight how our design approach delivers tangible benefits to communities and individuals. On the following pages we showcase methodologies for meaningful community engagement and quantify the social value our work generates. By measuring and reporting on these outcomes, we demonstrate our commitment to creating places that function beautifully and contribute positively to social cohesion, equity and wellbeing for the diverse communities we serve.

“A well-designed city can enhance our quality of life and improve our health and happiness. And nothing shapes cities more than our precincts, buildings and infrastructure.”

- Davina Rooney, CEO of Green Building Council of Australia

Improving social value through design

We believe in designing spaces that strengthen community connections, enhance wellbeing and foster inclusivity. Our focus is on creating projects that deliver meaningful, positive impacts that extend beyond the site, leading to lasting social value for communities.

At Hassell, we define social value in the built environment as the positive impact on people’s quality of life when buildings, places and infrastructure support their environmental, economic and social wellbeing.

While the creation of social value through built environment projects is not new, measuring social value can be subjective and open to interpretation. That’s why in 2024 we partnered with the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) to produce Social Value in the Built Environment, a discussion paper that consolidates the latest thinking in Australia and internationally on the shifting definition of social value and how best to measure its impact.
 

We’re proud to have co-led this research project with the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), which gathered insights from 26 experts across 23 organisations, all working within the built environment and social value fields.

But it doesn’t stop there. Since launching the paper, we’ve engaged Social Ventures Australia — a not-for-profit organisation that works to address and alleviate social disadvantage in Australia — to deliver training on social value to a pilot group of eight champions across our practice. This builds our initial capability for understanding social value needs and opportunities and the process for meaningful measurement.

We’ve also started developing a framework to embed social value principles into our projects from the very beginning. This will help us deliver clear, measurable benefits that create spaces which are not only functional, but also transformative for the community. Our approach, while still in development, recognises that the built environment has a direct influence on people’s ability to lead happy, healthy lives – from addressing health inequalities to creating spaces that bring diverse communities together.

Designing for inclusion

Inclusive design benefits everyone, not just those it targets

With population growth to be supported by significant infrastructure investments, including a A$213bn five-year major public infrastructure pipeline, Australia has a unique opportunity to intentionally shape a more inclusive built environment that enables all people to thrive.

At Hassell, the opportunity to design for inclusion lies not just with our involvement in large infrastructure projects but across almost all the sectors we work in – everything from Public Realm and Education and Science to Health and Sport.

“As an architect, you’re always guided by legislation and standards. But there’s a big difference between doing something because you have to, and doing it because you understand the difference it will make in someone’s life.”

- Tanya Golitschenko , Principal, Hassell Brisbane studio
 

We believe inclusive design should be fundamental to every project. The places we create should reflect and include the voices of the many different people we encounter in our lives every day. True inclusion recognises, respects and values the inherent worth and dignity of all people, advancing environments that include everyone and exclude no one. This considers intersecting aspects of underrepresented populations, to integrate gender equality, accessibility, culture and wellbeing into every phase of design. 

Over the year, we have continued to build our capability in inclusive design, including several key highlights:

1. DEVELOPING A FRAMEWORK FOR CONSISTENT APPLICATION 

We continued to develop our Co-Design Toolkit for Equity and Inclusion, engaging with designers across our practice to formulate a clear process for inclusive design. From early engagement and identification of co-designers, through to reducing reliance and seeking feedback, we take a consistent approach across all of our work globally. 

2. FORMING OUR DESIGNER WORKING GROUP

We established our Inclusive Design Community, a committee across all our studios that aims to promote inclusive practices, diversity and equality in all facets of design. Through collaboration, education and advocacy, we strive to embed a more inclusive and equitable lens into every aspect of our work.

3. SHARING OUR INSIGHTS AND EXPERTISE WITH THE INDUSTRY

We worked with the Champions of Change Architecture Group to author Equity by Design, a resource now available to the industry that provides a structured approach to embedding equity into decisions and development processes. Centring on the Coalition’s 7 Switches framework, the resource helps designers and decision-makers challenge traditional norms, systematically check for bias, and integrate perspectives of equity, diversity and inclusion at every stage of project development.

Our efforts have inspired an intentional approach on our recent projects in Australia and beyond, to ensure comprehensive, inclusive and impactful design outcomes meet diverse user needs effectively. Inclusive design is an imperative, not a nice-to-have.

In Our Practice

Design for Good and Time to Volunteer

We’re committed to enriching the communities where we work to generate positive social impact. Beyond our commercial portfolio of projects, we strive to use design as a force for societal good, working collaboratively with our partners to improve health and wellbeing, quality of life, resilience, diversity and inclusion.

It is critical that in delivering on our commitment to social impact, we are guided by all elements of our Sustainability Framework to deliver holistic and authentic outcomes. That’s why we launched a new organisation-wide program to ensure our time, effort and investment in social impact is purposeful, aligned, equitably available to all staff and creates the most value for communities. Our program builds on our recent work in designing the Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre in Uganda and One Heart Village in Tanzania.

Our approach comprises two components. Firstly, our Design for Good Program, which dedicates funding and support for global and local partnerships and low-and pro-bono projects with non-profit organisations that benefit the community. And secondly, our Time to Volunteer Program, which provides all our people with access to paid volunteer leave, which can be used to participate in a Hassell-organised volunteering event in our local communities.
 

Gender Equity Framework 

Endorsed by Hassell’s Board in 2021, our Gender Equity Framework sets out our collective vision and mission to achieve a balanced and diverse workforce with a focus on gender. We use the framework to guide our culture initiatives and policies, embedding it in all aspects of our talent and people processes.

Our Gender Equity Framework was reviewed in 2024, where we revised our gender equity target from 40:40:20 target to 45:45:10. This means that we have now set a formal target to have 45% representation of each gender across all levels of our organisation, with the remaining 10% flexible to be any gender by the end of 2028.

Recent achievements towards our target include:

PAID PARENTAL LEAVE

We continue to make 16 weeks of paid parental leave available to all staff. We have now reached a milestone for our new Parental Leave policy, achieving a 50/50 take-up of our primary carers’ leave across men and women in our practice, a striking achievement compared to the professional services industry average of 88% women, 12% men.

GENDER EQUITY WORKING GROUP

We established a working group to bring different perspectives and input to our Gender Equity Framework updates and priority initiatives. Now meeting regularly, our Gender Equity Working Group continues to analyse and research organisational needs and priorities for initiatives that will foster the achievement of our gender equity target. The group is focused on four key areas:

• Policies and ways of working
• Career progression
• Inclusive leadership
• Retention

ADVOCACY IN INDUSTRY

We continued to actively contribute to gender equity in our industry, through our involvement with Champions of Change (Architecture), NAWIC, the Property Council’s Equity + Inclusion Committee and the gender equity advocacy organisation Parlour.

While we have made progress, we recognise that pursuing our commitment to gender equity is an ongoing effort. Achieving gender equity means actively working within our practice and with industry forums to support all genders to thrive, and specifically supporting women to accelerate their careers within our practice and our industry. It also means continuing to invest in policies and practical support that help address traditional barriers to women accelerating their careers – childcare payments for new parents, people coaching, speak-up platforms, sustainable and flexible work policies, and training and commitments to eliminate bias in decision making.