Key Points
- Since 2020, Atlassian has gone from 12 locations to having staff spread across more than 10,000.
- A survey of 200 other big companies found back-to-back meetings were among key blockers to productivity.
- Data also shows workers save 10 days a year in time they would have previously spent commuting.
Teamwork software leader Atlassian is not afraid of workers refusing to return to the office in a post-pandemic world.
The tech giant on Thursday released as a "distributed" workforce to help other corporates grappling with staff who want to retain their freedom, do their best work and not commute.
Co-founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar say their bet on "team anywhere" is the biggest they have made in 20 years and concede they do not have all the answers.
They decided to chart the future of work while doing it, given 92 per cent of their employees say the way they work makes them more productive.
Since 2020, the company has gone from 12 locations to having staff spread across more than 10,000.
"Distributed work is just the next generation of digital transformation," Atlassian head of Team Anywhere Annie Dean said.
"It's just a word that describes how work happens today, which is on the internet," she said.
Atlassian's survey of 200 other big companies found the biggest blockers to productivity were back-to-back meetings, vague priorities, confusing emails and endless distracting notifications - not location.
Almost all (99 per cent) of executives agreed work will become more distributed in the future.
But the findings only cover so-called knowledge workers, or those who work online, not retail staff, factories or many essential services.
And for many bosses, tension remains around trusting workers they can't see.
"We have a belief as a company that the person who is the best decision maker on where they should be working is you, within certain parameters," Dean said.
Performance management and being more prescriptive about how people work, not where they work, proved to be important.
If staff working together are spread across time zones, they need to have at least four overlapping work hours per day to be effective.
About 60 per cent of new graduates who live near an office come in weekly or more, making them the highest office attendees.
New hires and new graduates especially benefit from meeting in person, including at pop-up events for those within a two-hour radius.
Data also shows so-called Atlassians save 10 days a year - or half a billion minutes - in time they would have previously spent commuting.
Less time in face-to-face meetings was also a plus but regular social gatherings were essential to keeping workers plugged in, the company found.
The company aims to bring teams together in person about three times a year.
Atlassian is also saving money on real estate, as it would have needed twice the office space if everyone turned up.
