Global tech company Atlassian has capitalised on Amazon’s mandate for all staff to return to the office, launching its own flexible work initiative this week to attract talent.
Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent a memo to its staff ordering all employees to return full-time to the office, starting from January next year. The mandate comes after the COVID-19 pandemic allowed for employees to take up flexible working arrangements in the last few years.
Many criticised the move from Amazon, including its tech company rival, Atlassian. In fact, almost as if in response to Amazon’s mandate, Atlassian launched the “Team Anywhere” initiative this week.
Team Anywhere embraces flexible work and working from home arrangements, giving employees “more control over supporting their family, personal goals, and other priorities” outside of their job.
According to Atlassian senior leader Dominic Price, there are more than 300 positions on Team Anywhere that are ready to be filled. In what many believe to be a dig at Amazon’s return-to-office mandate, Price encouraged those wanting to maintain their flexible working lifestyle to apply for a spot on Team Anywhere.
“If you’re somewhere and there’s been a mandate that demonstrably changes your life (for the worse), then I’d love to let you know that Atlassian is hiring,” Price said.
“I appreciate that I get to thrive at work and life. That I get to achieve my goals, and be a good dad. That I can knock a project out of the park, and be home for dinner.
Annie Dean, the Team Anywhere VP, said mandates to get employees back to the office doesn’t solve the “real problem” of “fake work”, a term she said was coined by Brian Chesky from Airbnb to describe “activities that feel like work, but don’t actually create value for the business”.
“And employees are drowning in it,” Dean said in a LinkedIn post. “They are lost in endless meetings and messages and spending so much time trying to get the information they need and coordinating their work that they get very little actual work done.
“Office attendance does not fix fake work. Rigorously adopted set of working norms that increase coordination and improve communication and focus fix fake work.
“A business seeking to “operate like the world’s largest startup” — as Andy Jassy wrote in an Amazon company memo announcing a 5 day return to office yesterday — should be pioneering new, more efficient modes of work, not wilfully endorsing the old way as a solution to new problems.”
In Australia, flexible work and working from home arrangements saw a spike at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, before the outbreak, about 25 per cent of Australia’s workforce worked at least partly from home, according to the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. By 2022, this grew to 36 per cent.
The HILDA survey also found that whilst more men than women worked from home in pre-pandemic times, more women than men now work from home.
Parents were and still are more likely to take up flexible working arrangements, particularly off the back of the COVID-19 pandemic. The proportion of mothers with children under five with working from home arrangements jumped from 31 per cent in 2019 to 43 per cent. The proportion of fathers with children under five working from home saw a similar spike, leaping from 29 per cent in 2019 to 39 per cent.