"OUR 'TEAM ANYWHERE' POLICY MAKES IT EASIER TO TAP INTO THE TALENT MARKET"

Atlassian's Co-founder and CoCEO Scott Farquhar, in an exclusive conversation with BW Businessworld's Rohit Chintapali, talks about the company's pioneering Team Anywhere' policy, how it defies conventional workplace norms in 2023 and embraces the power of remote work, Atlassian's commitment to global talent and its remarkable success in India. Excerpts

- Rohit Chintapali

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?