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Steve 1:06 Hello and welcome back to the System of Record, where we dive into the most important topics in enterprise technology with the people who are leading the path forward. My name is Steve Boese. I'm so excited for the show today I'm joined by Emma Crockett. She is the head of people insights at Atlassian, and I promised them, but before the show, I wouldn't spend the whole show talking about how much of a fan of Atlassian I am, but I didn't last more than 20 seconds by mentioning it, because I'm a huge fan and have been forever, and we'll talk about some of that as well. But Emma, welcome to the show, and good morning from the wee hours of the morning in Australia. How are you? Emma Crockett 1:45 I'm good. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a huge fan of the show. I'm happy to be here, and I'm even more thrilled to hear how much you enjoy our products at Atlassian. Steve 1:54 Yeah and I'm gonna try not to, yeah, I'm gonna try not to dominate the conversation with, you know, my fawning over your products, but I will talk about them some, because I do think there's some important points to mention, too, from a from a conversation perspective, why we're here today too not just about how I like the products, but Emma. So for folks who maybe don't know Atlassian, we still have, we have a lot of HR people listening to this show at last seen, not really a classic HR, you know, suite, or an HR set of products necessarily. Maybe give us a minute or so on Atlassian and some of the products Atlassian offers. Emma Crockett 2:31 Yeah, sure, so I would love to Atlassian was founded over 20 years ago now, and its mission is to unleash the potential of every team. I think most people are already familiar with some of our collaboration tools. So even if you haven't heard of Atlassian, you may have heard of JIRA, confluence, Trello, loom and rovo, I always find that once I mentioned one of our products, people's faces light up, and they typically have a response similar to yours, which is, oh my god, I love that tool, and we help over 300,000 companies, including folks like rivan and NASA, get their work done. So as for me, I'm the head of people insights at Atlassian. I also oversee our operations and benefits teams, and I've been there a little over a year, but I have been in the people analytics space for about 20 years now. Steve 3:29 Great, great. That's a great people analytics is such a great community too. Like, that's, I always say the people analytics community are like the opposite of the cross, you know, opposite of the Fight Club community, right? They always want to talk about people analytics, and they sort of bond together around it, which I think is great, and I think it's important too, for some of the conversation we'll have today. Yeah. I mean, the perspective of Atlassian, I think, is really, really interesting. I was doing some research before the show, and again, I'm a user of products, right? I've been a user about last name products forever. I started with Confluence 15 years ago. I want to say, right? And I had to introduce people to this idea of a collaborative editing of documents, which now sounds like, Oh, that's not a big deal, right? But back then was a really novel concept, and people just didn't want to jump into that. And I, you know, we as a small business, just run our business on Trello like we use it. I use it every single day, hours, every day, right? And so, but these and these systems are so powerful for helping people thrive and get their work done and have teams do their best work. I'd love for you, maybe I'm going to talk a little bit about that, like, what are the ways in which these types of systems, which, again, are not HR systems, right? These are systems of getting things done, yeah, actually kind of empower people and empower teams. I'd love to talk a little bit about that. Emma Crockett 4:57 Yeah, so, look, I think one of the best kept secrets is that, you know, people think of JIRA and Confluence and Trello and Loom as collaboration tools that we give to development teams. And I think one of the best kept secrets is like these tools help all teams. So I think you know giving, giving an example like HR, is in the middle of a major transformation. Work is more distributed than ever. So even if people are working from their offices, they most likely have teammates that live in different cities than them, in different time zones than them, and so not everyone is at work at the same time. That's really what I mean by distributed work. Employee expectations are shifting. There's a wonderful article in The New York Times about that in the tech space that people could go read and our you know, the giant elephant in the room that is, AI, there's a rapid ascent and adoption of AI across, you know, across the world right now, and this means that HR teams, specifically, we have to reimagine how we support and we connect and empower a global workforce. So I can talk a little bit about atlassians, you know, journey to becoming fully distributed company, which occurred in 2020. Steve 6:28 Yeah, for sure, and also a lot of growth, right? I don't know the exact numbers, but Atlassian has been a remarkably successful company, but with that comes a lot of growth, right? And sort of managing that is also certainly a challenge. Emma Crockett 6:42 Yeah, that's correct, and I promise I will get back to the original premise of your question, which is like, how are we using this work collaboration? But it ties it ties in. It ties in. So we became a fully distributed company in 2020, and you know, we had to adapt as an HR team to quickly meet that transformation, and it surfaced challenges, obviously, as it did for most companies around the world. So we really faced a lot of issues with employees accessing centralized HR information and people wanted you know, seamless support, quick answers, personalized experiences, no matter where they were in the world. And so we need a technology that breaks down the silos between functions, automates tasks and enables self service, and that is where really strong collaboration with IT is necessary as well, especially for an HR function. And so at Atlassian, our HR and our IT teams, increasingly as always working side by side to build sort of connected, people first experiences, whether that's through AI powered onboarding or automated workflows. So you know, we use JSM, that is our employee services platform internally. We refer, we refer to this as g'day and that acts as a launch pad to answer all those employment related questions that I talked about earlier. So we have, you know, 3200 queries managed each month across HR facilities, finance, legal, and g'day provides that single entry point for all those employee questions. It's, you know, g'day is an AI supported system with with Rovo, obviously. And so it's freeing up sort of 2800 hours annually. But more importantly, I think it's improving employee support. So it's, it's, you know, obviously all of our information is stored in Confluence. Those employees are activating those requests through JSM, and then, you know, Rovo is collecting all of that information, or using all of that information that it has access to in Confluence to answer those employee questions. You know, creating, basically, I think, sort of a more resilient and responsive organization. I also love to throw out there that we really, we don't use, we don't use email. Email is dead at Atlassian. That is not how we work. Steve 9:25 Wow, you're gonna, like, get a lot of folks wanting to try to apply for spots at Atlassian. Now, email, I always said, like, someday I'd like to be wealthy enough that I could it's not, you know, I can live on a beach, or it's, I want to be wealthy enough so I never have to read or respond to another email, again, for the rest of my rest of my life. Emma Crockett 9:44 The trick is Confluence pages where you're collaborating together and and sending looms instead, so that you can actually see someone's face. You're looking at the context together. You don't have to set all that context in email, and so you know you're just working in a very different way. Much more, much more human way. Steve 10:04 Yeah, and it's, that's, you know, we it's been a number of years, probably since I heard anybody talk about, oh, you know, we're gonna stop using email, or email is dead, right? It's email is like the cockroach of enterprise technology, right? It has been remarkably resilient, right? And so far has survived every technological revolution that's been presented to it. But maybe, maybe not, maybe, maybe you guys will lead the way and be at the forefront of maybe not eliminating email, because for a lot of companies, that's probably not practical, but significantly reducing how much work and collaboration is done in email, which is really the question, right? Emma Crockett 10:44 That's, that's exactly right. I mean, I still, I still do have to respond to emails. It's just I'm not responding to my co workers via email. I'm collaborating with them in a very different way. Steve 10:56 Yeah. So it is possible to improve the methods, even those sort of hide bound, old methods that we're all used to, especially older folks like myself, right? We've been emailing each other for 25 years, 30 years, however long it's been. And it can be difficult for some folks to think, to see that there is a different way, and obviously a better way to collaborate. I'd love for you to one thing I wanted to say though, Emma, before I move on, is what you talked about with JSM and the employee for the kind of the front door to the to the to HR service delivery really is. It's interesting because we just came off of our big HR tech show here in the US a couple of months ago, and I talked with Nickle LaMoreaux from IBM, who did our keynote, but also I did an interview with her about how they and they've done very much the same thing at IBM, right? They've made the front door to for whatever 100,000 people, or however many people it is right to to ask the questions of HR through their AI tool, right? That they built very similar to your story, right? And with remarkable success as well, both from a cost savings, but also efficiency and employee experience. And maybe I'll then the question would be, has that enabled the HR folks, like, whether they're business partners or, you know, whatever their title did, at last, has that really sort of changed their role a little bit too? Like, are they doing other things, maybe more value add things? Emma Crockett 12:23 Yeah, so I would say yes, it has freed up their capacity to focus their attention on solving the most pressing issues the business is facing, so that it is reducing their administrative load. For sure. Steve 12:40 Yeah, no. And that's what we're hearing again and again. And it's, it's interesting too, because I've been doing these enterprise tech stuff for a long time, and we've said that that's been the, you know, we were pitching free up your time to be more strategic for two decades, right? It never happened, right? Because, yeah, the business environment continue to get to sort of out complex are the ability of the systems to keep up with it, if that makes sense, certainly here in the US, like the whether it's regulations or new payroll rules or you name it, right, the systems could never keep up. And there was so much administrative work being pushed on HR. And now, only, only now, I think, is the real opportunity to truly free folks up, because they don't have to manually answer that question of, oh, when is what's where the company holidays, or when's the next pay day, or when's, can I get this leave approved, things like that, all that stuff's happening now, and remarkably more efficiently and often Just mitigated or managed by AI. Emma Crockett 13:41 Yeah. I mean, I think AI has been the huge unlock here that's really sort of changing the game one process at a time. Steve 13:49 Yeah, Emma, you guys are, you know, the leader right, in these kind of deep collaboration tools. And I mentioned, like, we use Trello in our small business. We're not developers or coders or anything like that, but we use Trello every day, all day long. And I think that whether it's JIRA or Confluence, Trello, any or even just take it out of Atlassian, any kind of just task tool, project management tool, before the show, I mentioned this to you, I, as I thought about it, and I was like digging into the prep for today's show, I thought, boy, you know, there's a real gap, at least, that I consider a real gap in enterprise tech, between those systems of work. And by the way, Atlassian has got a great like, set of resources on the website about the Atlassian System of Work. I love that. I love that title. We call this show the System of Record. I'm glad I didn't call it System of Work. I would have been like trumped but, but I think there's a gap between those systems, what's happening in those systems, and maybe more importantly, the insights we could glean from those systems and the HR systems and the talent systems, where we're quote, unquote, managing people, and we're making decisions around things like compensation or performance or internal mobility and succession planning, et cetera, et cetera. First of all, my first question is, do you think I'm right about that? And then second of all, is that something you've thought about as a people analytics person specifically, like, how do we maybe close some of those gaps? Emma Crockett 15:27 Yeah. I mean, this is a topic near and dear to my heart. This is, this was one of the reasons that I wanted to come and work at Atlassian. You know? Reason number one was like, Oh, wow, I really love the products. Reason number two was like, Oh, wow. I really love the people. And reason number three, very selfishly, as a people analytics professional, was like, I'm going to be able to get my hands on some work data, which is typically, like, the hardest, the hardest piece to kind of bring back into the equation. And so, yes, I think that there's a huge amount of power in bringing together the workforce data and the work data, Steve 16:11 Yeah, yeah, and it's, I don't think it's happening like because I've seen, you know, I see a lot of software, I see a lot of demos, HCM, largely, some ERP and other things too. But I think the farthest we're getting that I've seen from kind of the mainstream providers anyway, or just things like, you know, Slack integrations, or Microsoft Teams integrations, where, oh, you can, you know, ask a question about your benefits from a Slack channel or something like that. Now, I'm not downplaying that. That's really cool, and it's great. And for a lot of organizations, a system like Slack or a system like Teams is a system that they're in all day long, or much of the day long. And so making it a little bit more convenient operationally, it makes sense, but I but what I'm thinking about is much, I think more fundamental right is boy like I would love to know as someone in the HR system like, or just as managing people like you know, who are my stars on these projects, who keeps getting tapped to work on these important projects? Are they on schedule? Are they delivering great outcomes for the customers who? Who's going to those people internally to ask them in questions about important topics, right? Like, you know, Are they those signs of things? And I think that's, you know, that's the gap I'm seeing. That's boy, it'd be great if we could start filling in some of those gaps. Emma Crockett 17:34 Yeah, I mean, I have huge aspirations in this area, and very little success to share so far, but certain, but certainly is a topic that we have been thinking about deeply and are exploring on my team, for sure. So I think you're onto something here. Yes, I think that this is a huge untapped potential. I wish I had more to share, but, um, certainly I'm happy to join you on the soapbox where I think it's, Steve 18:07 Yeah, maybe we'll talk about, you know, I'll get one of my friends from, you know, big ERP on the show next, and I'll ask them the same questions, yeah. Like, Hey, are you integrating with JIRA? Like, what are you doing? Come on, let's make this work so. But I think that as a people analytics person, though, like, let's talk about, like, how people analytics itself is maybe changing in the age of AI, is it? Is it like everything else is changing, and we see like, but how is it affecting you and your team? Is it something like, is it profound? Is it minor right now, or are you sort of trying to figure that out? Emma Crockett 18:52 Look, I think it's a great question. I think that, I think that what we're seeing right now is a lot of sort of personal adoption of AI. So I think, I think, and I think what I'm starting to look for is how we actually change work that gets completed as a team instead of just individual productivity. So certainly I'm seeing I've talked to a lot of my peers. Some of my peers are saying, you know, especially in Europe, this is going to be very slow moving. I've talked to some of my peers that work in tech teams in Silicon Valley and are like, my work has completely shifted. I think Atlassian sits somewhere closer to my? Work is shifting really quickly and not this is going to take years, but yes, like yes, the short answer is yes, I'm seeing work changing in front of my eyes. I'm seeing that change accelerate. And I think, you know, I can, I can also bring it back to like, I don't just think it's Atlassian. We have our AI collaboration report that is delivered each year by the Teamwork Lab that sits in Atlassian. The AI collaboration report looks at AI enabled productivity in the enterprise, what the teams who are actually seeing the transformations from AI are doing, and what it found was that AI has made it easier to get work done, but it has not made it easier to work together. So I just mentioned as well, I'm seeing this personally as well. And you know some of the key stats. So AI is everywhere across teams and functions. Daily AI usage is up 2x since last year. 27% more people view AI as a strategic teammate. So they are viewing AI as being part of the team, 33% say that AI makes them more productive at work, saving an average of 1.3 hours a day. And companies that move fast to get AI into the hands of every team are twice as likely to see innovation than their slower counterparts. So and then for HR specifically, 50% of HR execs say that employees significantly benefit from working with AI. So it's really interesting that we're we're using AI, AI usage is increasing. We're personally benefiting from AI, but we are still working to figure out how to use AI to sort of shape the future of modern work and orchestration. I can talk a little bit about what AI, what that looks like at Atlassian, if that's helpful. Steve 21:58 Yeah, sure! Emma Crockett 22:00 So. Our point of view is that AI is a force multiplier for teams, you know, a teammate that can handle the chores that free up humans for more strategic and creative work. Groundbreaking perspective, I know, and probably, you know, a very similar point of view to it to what could get shared on this team. But I think, you know, if I'm to boil it all down, where I am seeing the most value from AI is when we use it to transform a process wholesale, and we have done that with personalized onboarding. Interesting, yeah, it's one of the biggest challenges for, you know, for any large company, is making sure that new hires feel welcomed and that they're set up for success. I can say that Atlassian, you know, in the past, like not everything always went to plan. Sometimes laptops didn't arrive on time, or we didn't make sure those employees had the right guidance or tools, and obviously that's not the best onboarding experience. So now when a new highest offer, sorry, a new hire signs their offer letter, AI, triggers a workflow, enrolls employees in their tailored onboarding task, and then there's also an agent that shares role specific information. And we as an HR organization, built that that agent so it was not built by engineers. It was built by our own HR team, which shouldn't be a huge plug, but I, you know, still feel proud and feel like I have to share. And the agent has completed, like the equivalent of, sort of 2000 hours of work in the first month, answering all our new hires questions. And it's now one of the most used agents across the company. So I feel like what we're seeing is when we embed that AI experience to kind of transform a process and not just, well, in addition to, I should say, because I don't think it's going away, in addition to enhancing, sort of the the personal product productivity of an individual, that's where I'm seeing sort of the most power. I have another example. Steve 24:19 Yeah, no, please do share. I just wanted to make a quick point, which is, that's a great example, because at Atlassian, you identified onboarding specifically, maybe among other things, but specifically, hey, this is a problem. We don't always get this perfectly right. We have an opportunity to do it better. There'd be a really clear benefit if we do if we do it better, and let's build some tooling around that to make the process better. It's one of the best examples I've heard in a long time about just applying AI and getting a result by design. Emma Crockett 24:53 Exactly. So we started with something that was a pain point for us. We reimagined the workflow like we didn't just use AI to augment the workflow. We actually were like, What would this ideally look like? And AI has it created unlocks that weren't there before. The idea of created sort of, you know, creating, sorry, I can't speak today, the idea of creating, sort of like that personalized onboarding plan per employee that comes in pre AI was, is the ROI even here? Yeah. But with AI totally feasible, it completely changes the experience. And it's kind of really exciting to see the payoff that it is a much more enjoyable process for the employee to go through. All right? My other example, my other example, so it's actually, it's not for the it wasn't built for the HR function. So we have a customer 360 agent, very popular across the company. It was originally built for marketing, sales teams to surface customer insights. So it answers questions like, Is this customer using our product? How long have they been a customer? And it can even generate sort of like a strategy or conduct competitive analysis. I find myself using this agent all the time to gain broader business context and ensure that the work that we're doing in HR aligned to not just our company strategy, but our customers, and so it's allowed me to have more powerful conversations internally with my teammates, because I understand not by, you know, organizing a Call and jumping on and asking a bunch of questions, but I have access to information that I otherwise wouldn't, so I also that's that's another very popular app across our organization, and I find myself using it all the time as well. So I don't know if I was to sort of distill it all down into one takeaway. It's like enhancing enhancing the human experience, designing it to identify a pain point, resolve that pain point, and then sort of support human judgment in what you do with that information. Steve 27:19 I think I really love that, and I feel like that is like a great, you know, just takeaway line or tagline that we could stick on this conversation. Because I think so many organizations are maybe at early innings with AI and trying to figure out where, where those applications could be. We've seen loads and loads of demos right in 2024, 2025 from enterprise software companies and software providers, and some of the demos are use cases that are very simple but also very powerful. And you could see how they could help me individually, as you said earlier, Emma, right? Individually, help me be a little bit more productive, be a little bit more efficient, and sort of some of these, these bigger breakthroughs, or maybe a little bit slower in coming, but thinking about where, where to find them, how to look for them, and then how to work, both internally and externally, to kind of architect the way the systems and the people are going to work together to make it happen. I think you've given some great examples of how you're having some success at Atlassian, which I really appreciate, and which was one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you guys on System of Record. Because I think, like, part of the reason we wanted to do these specific episodes and sort of bust out of the HR category a little bit was to help to challenge people to think a little bit more broadly, both about the connection between operational systems and HR systems, but now, as you suggested customer systems and marketing systems, and how that helps you do your job better, and how understand the competitive environment, perhaps, and understand that your you how you can contribute better to your your organization's objectives, which I think is a fantastic example. I never would have thought about that one, like, that's a new one, which I think is great. Emma Crockett 29:12 Yeah, I think it's really powerful when all employees across the company are reliant on where we're going, what our customers are facing, and what we're trying to get done. So that second bucket is, is where that customer, 360 agent, really helps me what our customers are facing. Steve 29:33 Really, really good stuff, Emma, I think last thing I want to ask you before I let you go, and I do appreciate you getting up extremely early to join us tonight. From Australia, today, anything coming up in 2026, boy, whether it's an internal thing or maybe an external thing or something, oh, I can't wait to see what you know, open AI does with this or that, like anything you think, looking out ahead say, Boy, I'm excited about this. And I can't wait to explore that or get into it. And anything on the horizon for you that you're excited about? Emma Crockett 30:07 I think what I'm most excited about is also what keeps me up at night, which is what we talked about earlier, which is we what excites me the most about Atlassian is that we are a collaboration company. We are, you know, our mission is to unleash the potential of every team. And I think the promise of AI is huge, but how do we really bring that together in a way that fulfills the promise that I think that we all see of the future. So I think that's kind of what excites me at most. I think if I, if I'm to sort of give an example of that, I think at our most recent team event in Europe, there's a user conference that we have, there was a real moment in helping our people and our customers, move from simply asking, sort of like, is this project on track? To confidently knowing, sort of like, here's what to do next. So I think that is hugely exciting to me. I think that changes sort of the very nature of the question that people are asking when they, you know, sit down at their computer each day. So I think, you know, an example is we just released this new sort of like create with Rovo experience. It probably does sit a little more in the personal productivity, where I think we've all experienced the pain of, you know, you sit down, you open a document, a blank slate in your brilliance, you know, you've got brilliance up in your brain. And then you're like, oh my goodness, I have to turn this into words and an idea that my teammates can react to. And, you know, Rovo helps you get started so it, you know, you give it the prompts you it has access to all of your company information, and it creates that first draft that, what I think is exciting about that is like it allows you to get to that point where you're actually collaborating with your teammates more quickly. But I think I still, you know, the flip side of that is, like, even that example, I think we, you know, we have the examples I shared earlier with sort of like onboarding and customer 360 where we're starting to tap into more of the teamwork. But I think that the thing that's keeping me up at night is just, how do we unlock at a more rapid pace, the sort of the reimagining of workflows that allow us to sort of be more AI native, if you will, and brings more of the sort of the human collaboration with AI to the forefront. So it's not just productivity. Steve 32:54 I think that's just as fascinating as the, you know, the conversation we had about connecting these Operational Insights to the HR systems and things like that, having, sort of having mechanisms or approaches to have AI facilitate and enable that collaboration and those connections versus right? Because I do get you, I think you're spot on by saying we're mostly seeing the AI tools just helping us all as individuals sitting in our own spaces, right? And and less about getting our teams to be more effective and efficient and work better together and be organized better. I think that's coming. I think it's probably the next evolution, maybe. But, yeah, I think that's fascinating. Emma Crockett 33:40 Yeah, I mean that. Well, that's the, that's the philosophy behind the System of Work. Is the, yeah, I think, I think that's, that's the promise, right? Is the, is the making sure that everyone's on the same page by, you know, aligning work to goals, planning and tracking that work, unleashing the collective knowledge, and then making AI part of the team. So, yeah, I have, I have hopes for the future. I have hopes for it. Steve 34:03 I do too. I'm so excited. Emma, this has been a fun conversation for me. I am again, I I'll say it one last time, such a big fan I am, and have been forever of Atlassian as from a user perspective, I don't think I ever actually talked to anybody from Atlassian before today, but like in person, but I've been a user of the products forever, every day. Used to use Trello all morning here and where I'm at, and we'll be using it again later today. And but love the product, and I do think Atlassian is one of those few companies that is really thinking creatively, but also doing really important work right on, sort of helping organizations navigate many of these changes, how work is changing, how technology is changing. And I can't think of a better company to know about and to learn about and to hear what they're thinking some too. So Emma, I really appreciate your time today, and I love the conversation. Emma Crockett 34:03 Thank you so much, Steve. And every time you talk about how great the products are I have a massive smile on my face. Steve 34:30 You should and, again, this is not just so anybody knows. This is not a sponsored show. There's nothing like that going on. There's no advertising. This is just me as a as a longtime user and a real happy user as well. But So Emma, this is great stuff Atlassian, and of course, you could find them at Atlassian.com We'll put that out there as well. Maybe we'll throw, Emma, your LinkedIn profile. We'll throw your LinkedIn out there as well. People can find you there. And yeah, I appreciate all the time today and your insights. Emma Crockett 35:41 Thank you so much, Steve, it's been a pleasure, absolute pleasure. Steve 35:44 Me, too. Great stuff! Emma Crockett 35:45 I'd love to come see you at a conference sometime. Steve 35:48 Yeah, we'll have to make that happen. Yeah, I'll come to, like, I want to sit like, in a hands on Trello session one day, and, like, maybe learn some tips and tricks that I don't know yet. Yeah, that would be, yeah, that'd be awesome for me, but good stuff. Hey, I want to thank everybody for listening to System of Record today on the HRHappyHour network. As a reminder, go to hrhappyhour.net. For all the show archives. Subscribe, tell a friend, and we would appreciate any feedback you have. My name is Steve Boese for our guest, Emma Crockett from Atlassian, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time, and bye for now. Transcribed by https://otter.ai