Human Resource Management: Strategic Workforce Planning at Atlassian

This report provides a strategic workforce planning analysis for Atlassian Corporation Plc, an Australian software company. The report begins with an introduction to Atlassian, its mission, and its human resource management approach. It then delves into the core components of strategic workforce planning, including environmental scanning using trend and scenario analysis, labor demand forecasting considering the company's focus on digitalization and automation, and labor supply analysis examining internal and external factors. The report analyzes Atlassian's current workforce profile, forecasts future staffing needs based on industry trends, and assesses the internal and external labor supply. It also addresses the balance between labor demand and supply, offering strategies to ensure flexibility and address potential gaps. Finally, the report outlines an action plan, including just-in-time recruiting and monitoring and evaluation methods to ensure the effectiveness of workforce planning initiatives, referencing relevant literature throughout.

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Introduction
A strategic workforce planning can help any business organization to build a stable
workforce with staffing levels throughout the business organization in each department along
with the right skills in the right time and in the right positions. This can enable the business
organization to gain more successful results and gain a higher return on investment. This is
highly essential for any business organization as it helps the organisation to maintain a
competitive position in the market in this highly competitive market environment. The
strategic working planning is built by designing a plan or process by which the organization
anticipates the current and future hiring needs of the company (April et al. 2013) . This
planning helps the business organization to meet the needs and their goals. The purpose of
this report is to develop a systematic workforce planning based on detailed environment
scanning, demand forecasting, labour supply analyzing and balancing the demands and
supply to meet the current and future staffing needs of the chosen business organization
Atlassian, software company based in Australia.
Company background
Atlassian Corporation Plc is an Australian software company which develops
software products for project managers, software developers and for content managers. The
company is best known for issue tracking application (Atlassian. 2019). The business
organization serves more than 135,000 customers. The headquarters of the company is
located in Sydney, Australia. Atlassian Corporation Plc highly believes in the power of
teamwork. It is the mission of the company to help unleash the potential and talent of every
individual in every team. They are highly customer centric business organization while
focusing on the human resource. The human resource management of Atlassian Company

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implements various strategies for addressing the needs and requirements of the workforce in
the business organization (Atlassian. 2019. The business organization is highly diversified
and so it the workforce, this imposes various challenges and obstacles to the human resource
managers of the business organization. However, the business organization has certain
approach in their human resource management policies which are applied by Atlassian
Corporation Plc and its teams (Cascio 2015). The human resource managers of the business
organization highly focuses on environment scanning and forecasting information about the
surplus or shortage of employees in the organization, and determine the balance between the
demands and the supply of specific talent and qualified employees.
Strategic workforce planning
Forecasting or environmental scanning: Atlassian Corporation Plc will be implementing
trend and scenario analysis for forecasting and environmental scanning. The scenario analysis
or trend analysis is a quantitative technique; this can help the business organization to predict
the possible demands for human resource and workforce on the basis of the present situations
in the business organization and the changes in the organization(Falletta 2014). The business
organization can use the historical staffing data for making future predictions of staff
requirement in the organization. This can help the business organization to create a
relationship and maintain a balance between the past and the future staffing needs of the
organization by linking the two with the help of performance or financial metric(Hota and
Ghosh 2013). The human resource managers must collect demographic information about the
workforce and the skills and qualifications required in the organization such as job
classification, the turnover rates, and education level of the employees and other information
of the workforce. This information can be used by the human resource managers to analysis

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of the supply and demand of the workforce. A gap analysis can be done by the business
organization and evaluate the trends of the workforce. Formal forecasting techniques can be
used by the business organization such as time series analysis, this can help the business
organization to evaluate the issues of the human resource, analyze the ways in which the
turnover rates might affect the workplace. The human resource professionals need to interact
with the other managers of the organization, to get information about the internal
requirements and identify the strengths and weakness(Mayo 2015). The external environment
such as the moves and actions of the competition must be taken into consideration.
Analysis of current workforce profile
Labour demand forecasting
Atlassian Corporation Plc is a large sized business organization with varied job description
and specifications. Product and software development are the main job descriptions and
specifications. These are the positions where the organization will be needing talent and
potential. Atlassian Corporation Plc highly focuses on trends and this might affect the teams.
Since the organization is in the middle of fourth industrial revolution, it is highly influenced
by multitude of trends and the company is becoming more inundated digitally(Work Life by
Atlassian. 2019). Therefore, to comply with the changes, the business organization needs to
redesign them to adapt the changes and thrive in the highly competitive business
environment. Therefore, the business organization is aiming to focus on the people and their
practices as well as the equipments to shape the team work. The organization is aiming to be
built around adaptability, agility and speed(Momin and Mishra 2015). It is believed by Ulrich
et al. (2013), (Reilly and Williams 2016) that the future is automated; it heavily relies on this
concept. Therefore, the employees demanded by Atlassian Corporation Plc are individuals
who are highly creative and are technically efficient. Since the business organization has been

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focusing on innovation and automation, it will be requiring talent to handle the advanced
technology and have in-depth understanding of the advanced technology, machine learning
and automation. Further, it might seek for individuals who have the ability to manage the
projects and have the ability to work on multiple projects. The employees of the business
organization will be awarded with reputation, outcomes and sponsorship instead of the
existing rewards systems of tenure and experience(Thomas, Smith and Diez 2013). The
employees must have the potential to cope with the culture of citizenship, shared services and
collective thinking.
Labour supply analysis
Internal supply of human resources: It is the mission of Atlassian Corporation Plc to
unleash the talent and the potential of every team in the organization. Currently the
organization has more than 3000 employees. There are different teams in the organization
including data and Analytics, Design, Marketing and sales, Product management and others.
It offers internship facilities to the employees(Reilly and Williams 2016). The existing
employees are highly diverse and they make unique contribution to the company which
drives the success.
External labour supply: As per the analysis, it has been identified that the labour market
conditions have strengthened in the past years. However, there have been developments in
the labour market and major shifts from time to time. Majority of the trends are reasonably
good. The changes in the supply of labour in the market and can be measured by the changes
in the participation rate that is the proportion of working age population in Australia those
who are participating in the labour market by making their labour available, either by actively
seeking for job or already having a job. The participation rate has increased strongly in the
past years. Moreover, there has been increase in the rate of women labour participation

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especially between the ages of 25 to 50 years(Noe et al. 2017). The older employees are
retiring voluntarily. The trend of early retirement has turned with the participation of both
men and women above the age of 50 years are rising at a significant rate. There has been
increase in the level of education of the men and women population and this increases the
likelihood of labour force. Therefore, Atlassian Corporation Plc has the opportunity to utilize
the fuller potential and skills of the existing workforce and the talent of the new workers.
Further, immigration has been a major source of addition labour in the market today. There
are almost 900,000 skilled people on temporary visas which amount to 7% increase in the
labour force(Mishra, Lama and Pal 2016). There has been an improvement in the availability
of flexible and skilled workforce responsive to the changes in the labour demand. This has
improved the labour market.
Balancing the demand and supply
The human resource department and the professionals might face minimal problems
while balancing the human resource demands and supply. Atlassian Corporation Plc does not
require additional labour as it is focusing on digitalization and automation mainly, even
though there is a demand for software problem/ web based or online promotion services. It
requires only minimum increase in the workforce due to the digitals nature of the products
and services offered(Momin and Mishra 2015). However, Atlassian Corporation Plc requires
addressing the human resource supply and demand in areas such as extensive team work,
various projects and creativity. Therefore, Atlassian Corporation Plc can undertake strategy
to ensure flexibility in the organization by hiring highly qualified employees, with an ability
to cope up with the changing culture of the organization and on the basis of the human
resource needs(Hota and Ghosh 2013). Atlassian Corporation Plc can implement
conventional methods and techniques along with advanced information system to analyze the

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data of human resource in order to support the decisions of the human resource management.
Nonetheless, the business organization must emphasis on certain characteristics of the
employees such as driving excellent in the job positions and creativity skills.
Action plan and implementation
The human resource department of the organization will be identifying the right kind
of talent suited for the positions of the organization to meet the future needs and requirements
if the business organization. Just in Time recruiting can be implemented by the human
resource department(Noe et al. 2017). Upon indentifying the need for talent in the
organization, the requisition of employees can be generated and the staffing can be done
quickly to fill the need of the organization. With the just in time recruitment process the
human resource managers can search for the skills and make an immediate impact(Thomas,
Smith and Diez 2013). Further, it can source the employees from beyond the geographical
boundary with adequate talent and potential to handle multiple projects and be able to cope
up with the changing culture and dynamics of the business organization.
Monitoring and evaluation
It is the responsibility of the human resource department to critically evaluate and
monitor the strategies implemented in the workforce planning. It enables the business
organization to make effective decisions about the activities. It needs to track the progress by
establishing initiatives(Mayo 2015). It needs to ensure that the needs and the requirements of
the organization are met and ensure that the initiatives taken produce positive outcomes. It
can conduct culture surveys and analyze the human resource data such as exit interview
responses and turnover data.

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Conclusion
Therefore from the above analysis, it has been identified that Atlassian Corporation
Plc has been focusing on digitalization and automation along with the changes in the culture,
structure and tasks of the workers. Therefore, there is a demand for employees with an ability
to handle multiple projects, extensive team work, creative and analytical skills. They must
have an in-depth understanding and knowledge about automation and machine learning. It
has been analyzed that there has been increase in the rate of skilled labour and increase in
labour participation. It can implement the Just in time approach to balance the gaps between
the supply and demand of labour. Further, it is provided an action plan and ways to monitor
and evaluate the workforce planning.

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References
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