• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan ceded even he can become tired of Zoom calls, highlighting how firms at the forefront of the hybrid work revolution are still establishing best practices.
• Yuan joined Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes at the Atlassian Team ’21 virtual conference on Thursday.
• While outlining the uncertain future of hybrid work, all three leaders expressed optimism in its long-term prospects.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

A year after the pandemic made remote work a necessity for millions, Atlassian hoped its virtual summit would celebrate the workplace software connecting teams worldwide.

But the event’s keynote panel temporarily veered in a different direction on Thursday, as the CEOs of Zoom and Slack, two champions of the work-from-home revolution, hinted at their anxieties about the transition to remote work.

Speaking to Atlassian co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes, Zoom founder Eric Yuan admitted even he is susceptible to ‘Zoom fatigue’, the exhaustion which comes after a slew of webcam meetings.

“Last year, on [one] day, I had a total of 19 Zoom meetings,” Yuan said.

“I am even tired of Zoom calls. It’s a big, big challenge.”

Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield said he is acutely aware of how working from home may have impacted team culture — the intangible metric which lures new talent to the company, and keeps existing employees from dreading each new day in front of a screen.

“I do sometimes worry that we’re running on the stored fat, or the accumulated social capital that had accrued over the course of the years prior,” Butterfield said of Slack’s appeal to new hires.

For his part, Cannon-Brookes said some companies have “seen a huge amount of burnout” since the switch, “much of which is connected with an inability to disconnect from work.”

Those comments formed a fraction of a hugely optimistic whole.

But taken together, those statements suggest that even within the companies powering a work-from-home revolution, questions of best practice remain.

‘There’s still a lot of uncertainty left’

Atlassian’s Team ’21 summit comes as Australian workplaces reconcile easing pandemic conditions with the lessons learned through lockdowns.

With the worst COVID-19 restrictions and occupancy limits all but over, many companies have signaled a return to regular office operations.

Yet CBD office occupancy remains suppressed.

Sporadic lockdowns go some way to explain this reticence, but the newly-discovered lifestyle benefits of hybrid work appear too good to relinquish for many workers.

Organisational experts say the flexibility of remote work has been transformational for young parents, and those who simply can’t spare the time for lengthy commutes.

Sensing a trend that will last longer than the pandemic, some titans have adapted, ceding that hybrid work is the way forward.

Atlassian is one of them.

Despite Cannon-Brookes’ concerns over hybrid worker burnout, the Sydney Morning Herald today revealed Australia’s $80 billion tech giant now expects employees to visit an office just four times a year.

The policy is a statement of intent from Atlassian — and a leap of faith, echoed by both Butterfield and Yuan during the summit.

Butterfield voiced his belief that hybrid work will stick around, while simultaneously acknowledging a host of unknowns.

“I don’t expect that many people will be coming into the office Monday to Friday, nine to five, unless their job is specifically about being in the office,” he said, “because so many people like that flexibility: less business travel, shorter commutes, more time with family.

“And I feel 80% confident with most of what I’m saying, because there’s still a lot of uncertainty left.”

And Yuan — the CEO of a company now synonymous with working from home — referenced familiar concerns about efficiency.

“Sometimes when it becomes hybrid, employees work from home, or work in-office, or sometimes work on the way, the challenge will be, ‘How do we make sure there’s no productivity loss?’” Yuan asked.

“The biggest challenge is how to embrace this new hybrid working mode,” he added.

“That is something new we are still learning along the way.”

Optimism and the unknown

In broad terms, each CEO was hopeful in the long-term success of the hybrid work project, hailing the freedom and potential afforded by remote employment.

However, the keynote also unveiled the nuanced concerns which animate the firms at the forefront of a global workplace transformation.

“If one [employer] says you have to be in the office, and the other says you don’t have to be in the office, it’s a no-brainer,” Butterfield said.

“We’ll see how that plays out, but it won’t take us long for the market to tell us what we should be doing.”

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