• Australian software company Atlassian announced Friday that it will no longer require its employees to return to the office for work even after the pandemic ends.
  • The news comes on the heels of similar decisions from Facebook and Twitter, which have also announced that employees can work from home permanently if they choose.
  • Atlassian will still operate its offices and employees can choose to work there after the coronavirus-related shutdowns end, but it will expand its recruiting outside its office locations.
  • Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Australian software giant Atlassian will no longer require its employees to return to an office everyday for work even after the coronavirus-related shutdowns end.

Atlassian employees can choose to work wherever they want, whether at home, in an office, or a combination of the two, the company announced Friday. Atlassian’s news comes on the heels of similar decisions by Twitter and Facebook to switch to a permanent distributed work model.

Atlassian, which is headquartered in Australia, has offices all over the world and it had some employees who were fully remote even before the pandemic. The company plans to continue operating its offices, rather than going for a fully remote model like the startups GitLab and Zapier. However, the switch will allow it to expand its recruiting efforts outside regions where it has established buildings. Atlassian says this could help the company seek out “amazing, diverse talent unbounded by the physical footprint of our offices.”

Read more: Meet the 15 power players leading $43 billion Australian software giant Atlassian to growth in tough times, even as it competes with Microsoft

"We believe that the post-COVID world will see an increase in distributed work in all industries, and we want to lead this for ourselves and our customers," Scott Farquhar, co-CEO and cofounder of Atlassian, wrote in an internal blog post. "Our products help teams collaborate from anywhere, and our practices and learnings can help usher our customers into the future of work with us. But we can't coach from the sidelines, we need to walk the walk - one mile in front of our customers."

The company has a market cap of over $41 billion as of Friday.

Do you work at Atlassian? Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at [email protected], Signal at 646.376.6106, Telegram at @rosaliechan, or Twitter DM at @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request.