Atlassian is hiring for a brand new HR position liable for constructing the frameworks that inform leaders which work ought to go to folks and which ought to go to AI brokers. The particular person, a director of capability planning, can be key to orchestrating a mixture of human and machine functionality.
“We actually suppose one of many shifts that’s going to occur with AI is we’re going to maneuver away from simply taking a look at headcount to essentially taking a look at how do you take a look at or architect capability,” says Alicia Lenart, vice chairman of HR enterprise companions at Atlassian, in an unique interview with HR Govt. “Capability is 2 issues, proper? It’s the human people that you’ve got, but it surely’s additionally the brokers that you’ve got.”
Lenart co-leads the corporate’s goal on inner AI adoption and stories to Avani Prabhakar, Atlassian’s chief folks and AI enablement officer, who in June printed a set of 5 HR beliefs laying out the corporate’s 12-month bets on the operate’s future, which embody the capability planning rent.
The brand new position is infrastructure
Lenart explains that the one that turns into the planner will arrange the instruments, methods and agent libraries that make capability seen. Nonetheless, selecting how groups are composed stays with the leaders who personal the work. “Who is aware of the work greatest? It’s the leaders and the managers in that house,” she says. She doesn’t count on a fleet of those planners both. If the mannequin expands, she envisions maybe one per operate, every a craft knowledgeable. “You actually should be near the work.”
Within the massive image, Atlassian mixed its folks crew and inner IT group beneath Prabhakar, on the idea that the builders of inner tooling ought to sit subsequent to the folks liable for how work will get performed. Lenart means that the manager who runs AI enablement needs to be a folks particular person as a result of the expertise funding fails with out the human aspect. “You should buy all of the instruments you need, you possibly can spend all the cash, however in the event you don’t drive the folks aspect of the transformation, then actually you’re going to be left saying, ‘The place is the worth?’”
From particular person adoption to crew workflows
Atlassian began its inner push about 24 months in the past with the objective of workers participating in common lively AI utilization. The corporate took an open-by-design strategy, encouraging workers in each operate to construct brokers, whether or not or not the outcomes have been polished. Lenart says roughly 90% of Atlassian workers now use AI each day.
The present fiscal 12 months brings a distinct goal geared toward team-based workflows. The corporate’s State of Groups 2026 analysis discovered that solely 24% of executives focus their AI implementations on the crew degree, though data employees spend 80% of their time on collaborative work. The report places a worth on the coordination issues undercutting enterprise AI beneficial properties, an estimated $161 billion a 12 months for the Fortune 500, a drag it labels the fragmentation tax.
Primarily based on surveys of greater than 12,000 data employees and 172 Fortune 1000 executives, the examine additionally discovered that simply 14% of groups have put in place all three practices that separate high performers: robust information context, redesigned workflows and a tradition constructed for experimentation.
Lenart calls the information layer the unglamorous prerequisite. “AI can’t use what it might probably’t see. In case you don’t have open methods of working, in the event you don’t have issues written down, then actually AI is just going to be so profitable,” she says. Layering AI on high of poor data foundations can be ineffective or worse.
On workflows, her recommendation is to withstand the temptation to automate every part directly. Decide a course of with actual friction, automate components of it and construct from there. Redesign the work quite than slapping AI on high of it. Atlassian’s folks crew, for instance, acquired began with three workflows that touched each worker final 12 months.
AI mandates on efficiency critiques
In a rising variety of firms, leaders now discuss AI as if it have been obligatory, and one report discovered that 86% of C‑suite executives say AI use is successfully required of their organizations. This isn’t the case at Atlassian.
“We don’t imagine in mandates about AI adoption at Atlassian as a result of that produces a fear-based tradition,” she says. “What you usually get is folks opening the instrument and so they carry out compliance, however then you definitely look, and also you’re like, the place is all that worth?”
Moreover, some employers have begun writing AI utilization into efficiency expectations, and boards urgent for returns on giant AI investments could make the stick strategy tempting. Lenart argues it backfires as a result of utilization numbers rise whereas innovation and engagement fall.
The corporate does use AI to make the overview cycle itself quicker, serving to workers draft self-assessments, pull context for peer suggestions and put together supervisor conversations. Nonetheless, the judgment stays human and workers aren’t anticipated to make use of AI within the course of. “We firmly imagine that the supervisor ought to nonetheless make the choice round somebody’s efficiency consequence,” she says.
Atlassian has experimented with AI days, protected calendar time for capabilities to work with the instruments, which indicators from the highest that the time is professional. Leaders additionally use AI themselves, and failures are included. “They’ve to really present the crew that typically it doesn’t work. Typically it does,” Lenart says. Staff who solely hear “use AI” from managers who by no means open the instruments draw their very own conclusions.
Learn extra: AI as a efficiency requirement? Staff, managers are divided
‘Knocking on open doorways’
For HR leaders attempting to show progress with out inflated productiveness claims, Lenart’s first suggestion is to run the transformation inside HR earlier than preaching it elsewhere. “Getting in and driving it along with your crew first and your self after which exhibiting these success tales is the way in which to go,” she says. Her second tip is “don’t boil the ocean.” Decide high-value use instances and go the place the champions already are. She calls it knocking on the open doorways.
When Atlassian’s folks crew moved early on the non-technical aspect of the corporate, different capabilities regarded over the fence and requested to hitch. Getting non-technical workers began stays onerous, provides Lenart, who studied psychology and describes herself as non-technical. She says assembly folks at “that is the place you click on” issues, as does committing recurring time, whether or not quarter-hour a day or an hour every week, as a result of the instruments preserve altering. Accountability buddies assist, in response to Lenart.
The spicy wager: Expertise applications received’t survive as designed
Among the many printed beliefs, Lenart flags that right now’s expertise frameworks, from efficiency rubrics to hiring standards to job structure and compensation, are too mounted for what’s coming. She expects motion towards fluid abilities, groups and pathways, and advises altering one program at a time quite than .
Atlassian is beginning with efficiency administration, and compensation pursuits her most. Firms have lengthy paid premiums by job household primarily based on market shortage, and AI is redrawing which abilities are scarce. “As quickly as you contact compensation, it’s a sizzling subject,” she says. “You’ve acquired to be actually cautious. However that’s the place I’m most excited to get began.”
