“A conference you go there,you meet a lot of people. It’s an intense experience,often residential,you might be away from family or at least you’re dedicated towards that particular endeavour,” he says.

“It’s a lot of learning,it’s a lot of building social networks and connections and we think that the office will be dedicated more towards those activities versus ‘Let’s come together to do the work’.”

Atlassian will still maintain its physical offices and is proceeding with plans to build amassive new Sydney headquarters. But the company will ‘pause’ efforts to acquire more space beyond its existing commitments. It will also consider creating smaller co-working hubs closer to where employees live.

The company is estimating it will have around 50 per cent office attendance based on surveys of employee sentiment.

“If you want to have an office environment you can do that,but you’re not allowed to have meetings with only some of your co-workers,if one person is on Zoom everyone’s on Zoom individually,” Farquhar says.

Atlassian employees have adapted quickly with over 1000 moving location since the advent of the pandemic and about 1500 new hires in the same time period.

“I think a lot of companies that are just doing it two days a week,they’re going to really struggle because they are not going to attract or retain talent,and I think they’ll end up going back to the old way because it’s inertia.”

Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar

“Overwhelmingly people are taking it up way more than I had thought,” Farquhar says.

Atlassian’s approach contrasts with that adopted bytech giants such as Google which has outlined requirements from September for employees to live within commuting distance of offices and apply if they wish to work from home for more than 14 days a year.

Farquhar said companies requiring staff to return to the office a certain number of days a week are not really enabling staff to work from different locations and are just saving a bit of commuting time.

“I think a lot of companies that are just doing it two days a week,they’re going to really struggle because they are not going to attract or retain talent,and I think they’ll end up going back to the old way because it’s inertia,” he says.

Farquhar says change needs to come from the top because if managers or bosses are in the office five days a week there is going to be a social norm to follow suit. Research shows people who spend more time with their boss get promoted at a higher rate.

“People taking advantage of this two or three days at home maybe are disadvantaged in terms of career progression which we know generally falls on to minorities and women,” he says. “It’s pretty bold what we’re trying to do,there’ll be some mis-steps along the way,no doubt,but we really want to do that because we have got to bake it into our product,in our practices,into the way that work happens.“