Return-to-office mandates will soon be ‘very outdated,’ says Atlassian’s head of distributed work
By | Jennifer Liu | www.cnbc.com
Companies that adopted permanent remote-work policies during the pandemic are doubling down on their commitments to flexibility while major companies like Google and Twitter call employees back to offices this month.
But it’s only a matter of time before in-person requirements become passé, says Annie Dean, who leads distributed workforce strategy at Atlassian, an Australia-based software company. “This conversation will seem very outdated as the next generation of leaders rises in the workplace,” she tells CNBC Make It, adding that “in the future, work is not a place. It can happen anywhere.”
In August 2020, Atlassian introduced a work-from-anywhere policy that allows its 7,388 employees to relocate to another city or country where the company has an established presence. Employees can “choose whether they come into an office or not — full stop.”
To be sure, Atlassian as a business benefits from the needs of distributed workplaces. It’s behind tools like Jira and Trello that help teams work in the cloud. Dean says working remotely helps the company build better products for other teams like them: “We want to solve the problems before the customer, and build technology to sustain this shift across the global economy,” she says.
She adds that Atlassian’s “Team Anywhere” policy has helped the company grow. It’s hired nearly 2,000 new staffers since introducing the policy, and nearly half of new hires live two or more hours away from an office.
