Atlassian’s Dom Price on how to keep staff on board when talent is scarce

The COVID-19 pandemic has likely changed the way we work forever. What many thought would be a few weeks of working from home quickly turned into six months, which then turned into 12. For some, that’s stretched to 18 months, on and off.

But aside from the practical challenges of remote work, the pandemic has also created a workforce that’s thinking differently about their employers and their work-life balance.

In partnership with PwC, Aussie tech giant Atlassian recently surveyed 1,200 white-collar workers about their attitudes to work.

The results spoke volumes. First, it became evident that employees — particularly those in the Millenial, Gen Z and Gen Y demographics — expect their employers to speak up and act upon societal issues. They’re also much more focused on maintaining good mental health.

But, the really telling thing was that, more than ever, employees are willing to walk.

More than two thirds (69%) of employees said they would consider turning down a promotion in order to preserve their mental health.

Further, 37% said they would resign if their employer acted in a way that did not align with their values — that’s up six percentage points compared to 2020.

The report comes at a time where employers are still grappling with lockdowns and managing a remote workforce, or trying to implement effective hybrid working arrangements.

It also comes amid a talent shortage, particularly in the tech sector.

So, when it’s an employees’ market, how can small businesses and startups make sure they’re catering to the evolving needs of their workforce?

More pressingly, how can they hang on to their very best people?

Speaking to SmartCompany Plus, Dominic Price, work futurist at Atlassian, says smaller businesses are on the front foot here.

For a huge enterprise, solving cultural workplace issues can be a huge and incredibly challenging task. In a smaller business, it’s easier to actually connect with employees and build empathy by having a conversation with them. 

We often hear about millennial and Gen Z workers being particularly ‘needy’, Price explains, or always threatening to leave.

But they now make up the majority of the workforce. And according to Price, those are not idle threats.

“They want to work for somewhere where they can have impact and meaning,” he says. 

“That’s not a bad thing.”

And small and medium businesses “can give that in spades”.

Ask what your staff want — and invest in it

If you’ve got smart people in your business, and you want to keep them (which you should), Price stresses the importance of investing in them.

It’s expensive and increasingly difficult to find new hires with the right skills, he says.

“Invest in the ones you’ve already got.”

But he also warns against second-guessing the kind of investment they would welcome. 

Business leaders need to be a bit smarter in the kind of opportunities they offer up. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work anymore, he says.

The solution seems simple: “Ask them what they want”.

In the past, it was typical to simply go through the training a business offered. Now, there’s a growing awareness that people think and learn in different ways.

Again, it’s much easier to personalise the experience when you have a smaller workforce.

It’s about helping people be the most effective and productive they can be. But it’s also about giving them more meaning and more joy in their work. That will benefit both employers and employees, Price says.

A poaching opportunity

Clearly, the demands of the workforce are changing. And, when big corporate entities can’t pivot quickly enough to meet them, there’s an opportunity for small businesses and startups to snap up disenfranchised staff.

Price points again to the fact that more than a third of people would consider quitting if their employer’s values don’t align with their own. That is a large pool of people open to new opportunities.

The prioritising of mental health over promotions also suggests that they value work-life balance, and that they’re not motivated solely by a fat pay cheque.

In small businesses and startups “there’s a lot more intimacy,” Price notes.

“That builds those relationships and bonds. That’s what people are craving.”

But equally, it’s easy to be on the wrong side of the shift. And for a small business, losing a star performer can be even more damaging.

SMEs cannot treat these elements of their culture as a ‘nice-to-have’, Price says.

“The cost of inaction is too high.”

A new (hybrid) world

Price himself has been banging the drum for flexible, remote-enabled work for some time. So, when COVID-19 forced Atlassian to go to full work-from-home mode, the capabilities were already there.

Now, however, we’re moving into a period of hybrid work, with staff members working partly from home and partly from the office.

Once we start to (finally) emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, what will the workplace look like? And what should businesses be doing to prepare?

Without being too dark about it, Price warns that getting this right will be much more difficult than anything workplaces have faced so far.

“Hybrid is a lot more complex than remote,” he says.

“I think a lot of people don’t understand this.”

Some people work best early in the morning. Some are night owls. For some, working remotely is the perfect fit for their lifestyle. Others would prefer to be in the office full time.

How do you find time to connect with teams in person, and is it even important to do so?

Getting this wrong could inadvertently lead to confusion at best, and a two-tiered, disconnected workforce at worst.

So, as business leaders, “we need to stop guessing”, Price says.

“Why are you trying to find a singular answer?”

He recalls speaking with one leader who suggested mandating office work on Mondays and Fridays, “because otherwise they would obviously be taking the piss”, he recalls.

That’s the kind of thinking that will not bode well in the post-pandemic workplace.

“If you’ve hired fully formed adults that you trusted when they’re in the office, are they not still trustworthy, fully formed adults?”

Trying to address this issue from the top down is not going to work, he says.

The key is yet again in the communication.

He urges leaders to ask their employees what will work best for them, inviting them to co-create a policy.

It’s going to be an experiment, he adds. 

“Actually engaging with your people and listening to them properly can have a huge impact.”

Engaging effectively

On a practical level, depending on the size of your workforce, co-creating any policy can be easier said than done.

I asked Price how exactly one would go about getting staff members’ input in an authentic and effective way, particularly when there is so much at stake.

Employee surveys can provide strong data points, he notes. But stats will only get you so far.

“You often lack ‘the feels’, or the context of the story.”

The rich information comes through conversation.

At Atlassian, for every one problem the leadership team is tackling there are 20-odd people who are passionate about solving it. There may be another 5,000 or so who have an opinion one way or another.

The trick is to listen to the large group through surveys, but carve out time to sit down with those 20 passionate people, engaging with them to create a solution.

Then, it’s a case of “experimenting our way through it”.

If the group comes up with an idea that ultimately doesn’t work, they move on and try something different.

“Once you get on that kind of experimentation, exploration bandwagon, amazing things happen,” Price says.

“But it’s about finding the people that are really passionate about it, and then doing it as cross-functional teams.”

This all plays into a strong culture, he notes. It means changes in the company are driven by employees — they’re not just something that happens to them or around them.

The workers own the evolution of the business.

That sends engagement “through the roof”, he adds. And, as we all know, more engaged employees are more effective employees.

The approach is more important than the outcome

Price admits here that he hasn’t exactly served up the solution to the future of work. There isn’t necessarily a ‘right’ way to do it. But there is a right way to get there.

“The approach is almost more important than the answer,” he says.

Business leaders should be considering what they want to keep from the past 12 months of operations and what they don’t; what they haven’t tried yet that they might want to.

We’ve all been forced into an experiment, he adds. How can we make sure we learn from it, instead of wishing it away?

The main point, for him, is to prioritise employee wellbeing, work-life balance and the flexible work strategies that will define the workplace of tomorrow.

And when he says prioritise, he means actually prioritise — not putting it half way down an ever-growing list of ‘priorities’.

“Employees are OK with honesty,” he says.

He urges employers to share what they value and what they don’t, and not to shy away from admitting they don’t know what the right answer is, either.

“Just be transparent with it.”