- Despite extreme circumstances, most Americans are enjoying
remote work
- Many have pointed to improved work-life balance and increased
job satisfaction
- Americans are more opposed to office return than global
counterparts
Atlassian Corporation Plc (NASDAQ: TEAM), a leading provider of
team collaboration and productivity software, today announced the
launch of a global study into distributed working. The report,
titled, Reworking Work: Understanding The Rise of Work
Anywhere, was conducted by Australian research agency Paper
Giant and surveyed more than 5,000 participants in Australia,
France, Germany, Japan, and the US using observational,
qualitative, and ethnographic research methodologies.
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It shows how the nuances of modern work have been amplified,
demanding a shift in the way organizations manage an increasingly
distributed workforce. Knowledge workers have had to balance
dramatic changes in personal and professional lives, juggling more
than ever in order to be successful. Globally, 44 percent cited
work-life balance as the single biggest change felt in this
period.
Despite the sudden and severe shift to almost fully remote work
in late March brought on by COVID-19, Americans across the board
have reported positive remote working experiences, empowered by the
flexibility and convenience this new way of working has
offered.
Millions of Americans began working from home in late March when
some states imposed early and tight restrictions due to the rate of
community transmission. In the face of these restrictions, however,
optimism shone through. Over half (55 percent) of Americans
surveyed noted they found working effectively from home during
COVID-19 easy, with 44 percent suggesting their work-life balance
has improved as a result.
In fact, Americans have enjoyed remote work so much, more than
half (53 percent) noted they would prefer to work at home even if
they had to cover the added costs.
Even prior to the pandemic, Americans were better prepared for
this distributed work transition. Over half (51 percent) of
surveyed respondents had already worked in distributed teams prior
to COVID-19. With many organizations having offices spanning Alaska
to Alabama as well as overseas operations, distributed environments
were less foreign to American workers, bridging knowledge gaps in
regard to working with those in different locations.
There are also a number of interesting observations from the
COVID period when we look through a gender lens. Without the
performative elements of work, many women in the US have felt
liberated from expectations to present in a certain way and were
able to simply focus on their jobs. 41 percent of all US women
surveyed say their confidence in their ability to achieve has
improved since the move to remote work. This is better understood
when we cross-compare that figure to the 50 percent of men who
believed the same.
This is not to say it’s been a totally positive experience.
Having been one of the hardest countries hit by the pandemic, there
is still some anxiety amongst the American workforce. Very few
Americans (12 percent) are prepared to return to an office setting,
a sentiment that is better understood when we consider 67 percent
of Americans are nervous about returning to the office without a
vaccine in place, compared to 53 percent of the global sample.
“We’ve been seeing a shift to a more distributed way of work for
some time, and many businesses understood that giving staff more
flexibility over how and where they work would pay dividends in the
long run. What we didn’t envisage was how a pandemic was going to
throw accelerant on these plans,” says Dom Price, work futurist at
Atlassian.
“While we may know how to excel at teamwork in the workplace,
the workplace as we know it has fundamentally changed. People
everywhere are working under new and constantly shifting unique
contexts which means the future of work is much more nuanced than
it had been before.
The best way to tackle the challenges we face is to get much
more comfortable in the uncertain, unplanned, and ever-changing.
Now is our opportunity to use the challenges we have been presented
with to adapt for the better, guided by deep insights from
real-world experiences of employees around the world.”
It’s Complicated
The research identified three key factors influencing people’s
ability to adapt to distributed styles of work. These are household
complexity, role complexity, and network quality. The complexity or
quality of each directly correlates to how people are coping with
pandemic working conditions.
Household complexity considers domestic responsibilities
and how many people are in their household. Caregivers were less
likely (49 percent) to agree that effective working from home was
easy than those without children (61 percent). Many people felt
unable to bring their best selves to home or work identities, with
60 percent saying it’s more difficult to maintain boundaries
between work and personal lives.
Role complexity examines the remote readiness of specific
roles. It explores the full spectrum of workflow and social
interaction someone depends on to be successful. The research
highlighted that the remote work experience can be isolating at
times, leaving many yearning for workplace banter. Almost half (49
percent) of Americans echoed this sentiment, noting they missed the
energy of working alongside colleagues at the office, compared to
only 28 percent who did not.
Network quality focuses on access to personal and
professional networks, which contribute to our sense of belonging
and support. Three in four (70 percent) Americans felt their
company would need to provide better systems and tools to sustain a
fully distributed working environment.
What in the World
Globally, the research unearthed fascinating insights into the
unique impact of COVID-19 on France, Germany, Japan, and Australia.
America’s newfound appreciation of work-life balance is echoed by
almost half (44 percent) of our German counterparts, who reported
better satisfaction with their work-life balance compared to only
17 percent who felt it had worsened. Additionally, the mass
migration to our home offices has seen a considerable 86 percent of
Australian workers better appreciate the quality of life outside of
their workplace.
Teamwork also continues to thrive in this new distributed
environment. Only 13 percent of respondents in Germany felt their
teams worked worse together remotely and an impressive 61 percent
of French respondents reported a strong feeling of unity and
cohesion with their team as a result of the pandemic and proceeding
lockdown.
However, the lived experiences of modern workers are not
uniform. Only 15 percent of Japanese respondents found working from
home easy, with 44 percent suggesting WFH was in fact more
difficult. Additionally, 17 percent of Japanese respondents
surveyed felt their team worked better together. In Australia, the
social yearning for workplace banter shone through, with 77 percent
missing the energy they got working alongside colleagues at the
office.
“If you’ve ever said your people are your biggest asset, now is
the time to act upon that,” says Dom Price, work futurist at
Atlassian.
“We’ve heard many positions on the future of distributed work
but the reality is that one size won’t fit all situations. This
research underscores just how nuanced the future of work is, it’s
not about a company going fully remote or hitting some specific
flexibility target. These are the voices of real people facing real
complexities. There’s no silver bullet for the future of work, but
there is now a blueprint.”
The report follows the recent announcement of TEAM Anywhere, an
initiative allowing all Atlassian employees to work from wherever
they choose. To support the future of work detailed in the
research, Atlassian is giving all employees the choice to work from
any combination of home, the office, and other locations where they
feel productive.
Download the full report now for more details. Further
commentary on the research and its implications are available on
Atlassian’s WorkLife Blog as well as the Atlassian Team
Playbook.
About the research
The Reworking Work: Understanding The Rise of Work
Anywhere was commissioned by Atlassian and conducted by Paper
Giant, with the support of international research partners. The
methodology used a mixed-method approach, combining 32 in-depth
remote interviews via Zoom with various workers around the globe, a
two-week global diary study of 67 participants as well as a
15-minute quantitative survey of almost 5,200 knowledge workers
across five geographies.
Australians made up 11 of the in-depth interviews, 17 of the
diary study participants, and 1010 quantitative research
respondents. Respondents for all three methodologies were between
the ages of 25-64, at a company of 250 employees or more, and had a
company tenure of three or more months.
About Atlassian: Atlassian unleashes the potential of
every team. Our collaboration software helps teams organize,
discuss, and complete shared work. Teams at more than 174,000
customers, across large and small organizations - including General
Motors, Walmart Labs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Lyft, Verizon,
Spotify, and NASA - use Atlassian’s project tracking, content
creation and sharing, and service management products to work
better together and deliver quality results on time. Learn more
about products including Jira Software, Confluence, Trello,
Bitbucket, Opsgenie, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Align at
https://atlassian.com.
About Paper Giant: Paper Giant is a strategic research
and design consultancy that helps organizations understand and
solve complex problems. Paper Giant specializes in combining
qualitative and quantitative research to understand customers and
communities and translates that understanding into designs for
product, service, and policy. Paper Giant has offices in Melbourne
and Canberra and works throughout Australasia. Learn more about
their work and services at http://papergiant.net
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201007005330/en/
Jake Standish (206) 384-3961 press@atlassian.com
Atlassian (NASDAQ:TEAM)
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