Atlassian named Australia’s best place to work

Atlassian staffers create the culture over a game or two at their Sydney headquarters.

Software provider Atlassian is Australia’s best place to work, a national survey of more than 28,000 workers by Great Place To Work Australia has found.

Atlassian beat algorithmic trading firm Optiver for the honour, while the top five was rounded out by software-as-a-service vendor Salesforce, advertising agency Universal McCann and cosmetics distributor MECCA Brands.

The full list of the 25 best workplaces with more than 100 employees, and the best 25 with fewer than 100 employees, can be viewed here.

The rankings are determined by combining results from an employee survey, which measures behaviours known to lead to a trusting workplace, with a “culture audit” that gives human resources personnel the chance to express their company’s unique culture. Scores are weighted two-thirds towards the employee survey.

Atlassian is just 12 years old, but was valued this year at $3.3 billion by an external investment and is growing fast. It plans to add 600 people to its existing 900 this financial year.

“Every 18 months to two years, you are essentially building a new Atlassian,” says chief people officer Jeff Diana.

Founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar built their company on a “no bullshit” ethos, but they know the culture underpinning it can never stay the same.

“You can never preserve a culture; what you can preserve are your values and your values can drive what you do,” says Diana, who himself only joined Atlassian two years ago.

“When I talk to new hires, I tell them we hired them to add to the culture. We want their experiences, their viewpoints, their perspectives, their talents. So, when I hear companies say they want to preserve their culture, I get worried because those things will always evolve with the great people you add.”

Understanding culture

Cannon-Brookes showed his understanding when he tweeted his “quote of the day” from a staff offsite in May: “Culture is what happens when bosses aren’t around.”

The survey found the best workplaces have bosses dedicated to empowering, training and valuing employees, and an unusually high number of those bosses were women.

Seven of this year’s top 22 places to work are run by management teams dominated by women executives. That include companies with female-dominated workforces, such as cosmetics brands Estée Lauder and MECCA, and stationery retail chain kikki.K, but also media companies OMD and Mindshare as well as charity Starlight Children’s Foundation.

The survey also discovered that gender balance affects company culture, and that gender in the staff ranks has a bigger impact than gender in the executive ranks.

Female employees tended to agree more than men that management hires people who fit in well, management has a clear view of where the organisation is going and how to get there, management would lay people off only as a last resort, and that people avoid politics and backstabbing as ways to get things done.

Male employees agree more than females that they receive a fair share of the profits made by the organisation and people are paid fairly for the work they do.

Gender also affects the more superficial side of being a great place to work: the perks of the job.

For example, while IT companies are known for office foosball tables and free beer, female-dominated Estée Lauder offers free monthly massages, while Kikki K supplies three months’ worth of nappies to staff members who become parents.

For the first time this year, BRW created a separate Best Places to Work list for companies with fewer than 100 employees, reflecting the challenges larger organisations have in maintaining a happy and fulfilling workplace. The best five places with fewer than 100 employees to work were: 1. The Physio Co (a list regular whose founder, Tristan White, offers himself as a “culture coach” to other workplaces) 2. Coleman Brands (which takes hiring the right people so seriously it spends a week just training its recruiters) 3. SiDCOR Chartered Accountants 4. Maxus and 5. ansarada.

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