The era of remote work, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, is being viewed as a grand experiment, especially by companies like Atlassian, a software firm renowned for tools like Jira and Trello.
Annie Dean, Atlassian’s global head of “team anywhere,” who formerly led remote work strategies at Facebook (now Meta), emphasizes the importance of treating remote work as a product. She initiated the establishment of a “team anywhere lab” about six months ago, equipped with behavioural scientists conducting controlled experiments to tackle Atlassian’s major distributed workforce challenges.
One of the lab’s initial experiments focused on enhancing how Atlassian employees manage their time. With over 11,000 employees worldwide, Atlassian allows most of them to work from one of its 12 offices, home, or a blend of both. Teams are organized by time zone to ensure minimal time differences among colleagues.
Research revealed that the prevalent issue in modern work setups isn’t where we work but how we work. Employees face an abundance of meetings and a scarcity of focused work time. To address this, Atlassian introduced an experiment involving “timeboxing,” where employees allocate specific time slots for tasks. Participants were guided to allocate their time as follows:
- Reserve no more than 30% of the week for meetings, prioritizing only essential ones.
- Allocate 10–20% of the week for “open collaboration,” synchronizing with key collaborators.
- Reserve 30–40% of the week for “focus time,” dedicating uninterrupted blocks for creative work.
- Limit time spent on messages to 20% of the week, reducing distractions by scheduling dedicated response times.
Employees who participated in timeboxing experienced a 17% decrease in meeting attendance and a 13% reduction in meeting duration. They also reported greater progress on top priorities, with 67% of individual contributors and 71% of managers acknowledging this improvement.
Although the results are promising, Atlassian isn’t rushing policy changes. Dean indicates that they’re exploring broader behaviour changes within the organization. Their aim is for 30% of the workforce to engage in experiments by year-end, with changes aligned with the findings.
In essence, Atlassian’s approach underscores a commitment to enhancing productivity and company performance through thoughtful experimentation and adaptation in the remote work landscape.