“Our ‘Team Anywhere’ Policy Makes It Easier To Tap Into The Talent Market”

The world’s largest companies are strategising to bring their employees back to office in 2023. Why is Atlassian persisting with its ‘work from anywhere’ (Team Anywhere) policy?

We have offices in many countries but we are a team anywhere around the world. Specifically for India, we spent about $16 million to exit the special economic zone (SEZ) in Bengaluru to enable Atlassians to work from anywhere. Since we made the policy change, about two-thirds of our staff that we have hired in India do not live in Bengaluru. We hire Atlassians in 17 states across India. About 86 per cent of Atlassians who live in Bengaluru visit the office each month and 48 per cent of them are coming in 3-5 days. And we have a number of growing hubs or clusters in India outside of Bengaluru, such as Delhi-NCR (11 per cent), Pune (3.8 per cent) and Hyderabad (3.2 per cent). 

We came to India because of the talent market which has 4 million software developers and a lot of them are in Bengaluru. But many of them are based elsewhere in India as well. With our ‘Team Anywhere’ policy it’s easier to tap into the talent market here. Our attrition is at 11 per cent. Hence, it is win-win for us.

Many companies are seeing the attrition grow among women employees after getting serious about ‘back to office’ policies because of various reasons. What are your observations?

Atlassian has more than doubled the number of female employees to 27 per cent since practising 'Team Anywhere'. We started working from anywhere from March 2020 and since then have transitioned into our Team Anywhere model. Our teams are taking good advantage of our policy. In fact, one of our employees who is married to military personnel would earlier struggle with her job, as her husband would get reposted every two years or lesser. But with Atlassian, she has found a great fit for a workplace.  

Tell us about the importance of India for Atlassian.

In the last four years, we have grown our staff in India nine-fold. We are 1,700-people strong here and continue to hire aggressively. India is also our fastest-growing region. We have entire products here and we operate in three markets: Agile and DevOps, Work Management, and ITSM. In ITSM, 40 per cent of our global staff operate in R&D from India, including support. Our product ‘Status Page’ runs 100 per cent out of India. 

Being a Sydney-headquartered global company, why not hire from Australia? 

Talent exists all over the world. Our mission as a company is to unleash the potential of every team. Coming from Australia, we operated in a place where most people would think that there isn't great engineering talent. And in some ways, we had to build it and grow by looking at talent everywhere. The reason we chose India is because there are 4 million software developers here and in comparison, there are 1,30,000 in Australia. Another thing we found is the depth of talent here. For example, we saw a lot of people returning from the Silicon Valley to India. This diaspora also interested us. Besides, the growth of startups in India has made the country a hotbed of talent as well.

You serve as a Board Director on the Tech Council of Australia. What kind of cooperation are you seeing between India and Australia when it comes to technology? What’s missing?

I recently met Prime Minister Modi during his visit to Sydney. Our discussion went on the lines of how trade is often focused on tangible resources such as iron and coal, but there is a more substantial form of trade between India and the world, which is the exchange of intellectual property (IP) and the movement of people, including migration. I also highlighted how specific geographic economic incentives in India can be limiting for businesses that do not fit within those incentives, leading to challenges and costs when exiting such programmes. 

I proposed the concept of "Team Anywhere" policy, advocating for remote work flexibility that transcends geographical restrictions. It could lead to increased workforce participation for women, poverty reduction, economic growth in rural areas and the expansion of the middle class. 

What kind of business growth do you expect from India in next few years?

At the moment, rest of the world is hit with an economic downturn. But India is continuing to grow compared to almost every other country. The startup space in India is coming of age. So, what we are seeing is people who worked in some of the large Indian outsourcing firms, they are having ideas and starting businesses for the domestic market. As that grows, we are going to see a larger software industry in India. Since we sell to software engineering teams globally, the trend is going to accelerate and help increase our percentage of market share. Collectively, we can help grow the Indian economy.