October 2021 – Atlassian among Aussie workplaces named as World’s Best

Australia’s home-grown success story Atlassian has been recognised as one of the World’s Best Workplaces™, entering the definitive list of the best places to work for the first time. 

Great Place to Work® and Fortune have announced the Fortune World’s Best Workplaces™ 2021, naming 25 global leaders. 

DHL Express, the global transport and logistics giant, was named the World’s Best Workplace for 2021, after placing on 47 different national lists spanning five continents, including Australia. 

Cisco, which ranked number one on the Australian list, was named second on the 2021 global list, while hotelier Hilton placed third. 

In all, seven companies from Australia’s Best Workplaces 2021 List made the global list — DHL Express, Cisco, AbbVie, Salesforce, Novo Nordisk, Adobe and the Australian-founded and Sydney-based Atlassian. 

Preparing the World’s Best Workplaces list is an enormous undertaking. The 25 winners were selected from 10,000 companies in an analysis of company culture that represented the voices of 19.8 million employees in 106 countries. 

It is the largest annual global survey of employee opinion ever undertaken. This is the 11th year the world’s best have been celebrated. 

To be considered for a place on the World’s Best Workplaces list, companies must have already been identified as outstanding employers by appearing on at least five national Best Workplaces™ lists in Asia, Europe, Latin America, Africa, North America or Australia. 

“The World’s Best Workplaces are the most sweeping and consistent examples of inclusive company cultures we’ve ever known,” said Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. 

Bush told the World’s Best Workplaces 2021 event that the best companies took wellbeing to a new level, thinking about their people as the whole person. 

“Not just how they were performing productivity wise at work [but] how are they doing financially, how are they doing emotionally, how are they doing in terms of their psychological health.” 

Compared to other workplaces, employees at the World’s Best are 17% more likely to say they have unique benefits, 16% percent are more likely to believe pay is fair and 14% more likely to say they have training and professional development opportunities. 

Notably, amid the global pandemic, scores were higher than last year on all 60 survey statements. 

Samantha Huddle, general manager of Great Place to Work in Australia and NZ, said organisations who had invested in wellbeing initiatives before the pandemic have done well in terms of trust and psychological safety. 

“This is an area where there’s now greater expectation from employers around what their companies can do to support them to manage and balance their work, their laws and their personal lives so they can bring their whole selves to work,” she said. 

Atlassian, the global software tools company, earned a spot on five national Best Workplace lists, including in Australia. Some 93% of Atlassian’s employees say management keeps them informed about important issues and changes, outperforming the global benchmark by 8%. 

Atlassian says transparency, honesty and two-way dialogue are the keys to the company’s success, as is acknowledging that management isn’t infallible. 

“We don’t get all the decisions right, but we are always open,” says Erika Fisher, chief administrative officer and general counsel at Atlassian. “We believe that owning up to not knowing something as a leader or admitting a mistake helps foster trust across the company.” 

The company has taken public stands on issues such as climate change, racial justice and voters’ rights. Most recently, Atlassian signed a public statement against the anti-abortion heartbeat bill in Texas. 

“Our employees trust us to do the right thing and ultimately contribute to healthy communities for them to live in,” says Fisher.  

“We know that access to healthcare is a huge concern… It’s our responsibility to use the platform that we have as a global company to stand up and fight for their rights.” 

Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture and has published the definitive annual list of the best places to work in Australia since 2008, along with lists in 60 other countries plus the annual World’s Best list published annually in Fortune.