Global companies have a responsibility to tackle global issues. That’s the opinion of Mike Cannon-Brookes, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Atlassian, providers of team collaboration software used by businesses around the world. For Cannon-Brookes, the buck stops with business leaders: 

“It’s not up to individuals: the difference people can make is small compared to the impact that governments and businesses can have. As a leader of a business, I’ve seen my employees live through climate-driven disasters – our employees have been impacted by 10 just this year. These climate disasters will only become more common. We need to act now. We talk a lot about reaching net zero by 2050 – we have to start that work today. The next few years are critical.” 

Understanding how climate-driven disasters have touched the lives of Atlassian employees brings home the scale of the problem. Antonia Verdi, Instructional Designer at Atlassian, describes the severe snowstorms in Texas, deemed the Big Freeze: 

“It first hit us in the middle of the night. In the morning, the apartment was below freezing. We had no internet, no power. It actually took a week and a half for the power to come back.” 

The situation looked bleak for Antonia and her family:

“The only solution to what we were experiencing was we needed to find a hotel very close by. I really didn’t think we were going to make it through the snow storm.” 

Fortunately, Atlassian had set up an emergency hotline and help was at hand: 

“I was very close to giving up hope at this point. My boss reached out and the Atlassian team got back to me in 20 minutes. They’d booked an Airbnb with heat and running water five minutes away. It was the most intense relief I’ve ever experienced. The company saved our lives.”

Lans Salvador, Customer Support Manager at Atlassian described flooding in the Philippines as “terrifying:”

“When the power went out, all we had was what was left with mobile phones and laptops. Just trying to keep in contact to check on people – it’s scary if no one replies to you, right?” 

Help had to be delivered before phone batteries ran down. Salvador’s team sprang into action: 

“Out of 280 people, we were able to contact 270 and send out everything they needed. Anything we could give employees in terms of support, Atlassian went all out.”

In California, Shannon Winter, Corporate Brand Lead at Atlassian describes the devastation caused by raging wildfires: 

“My parents had lived in their home for nearly 40 years. During the fires, they were evacuated from the house. The next day I called my mom to check in on how they were feeling and through tears, she told me that the house was completely gone.”

Shannon says that what was lost was irreplaceable: 

“It didn’t feel real at that moment. You think of all the photos and yearbooks and it almost feels like a loss of identity.”

Australia also had to deal with the devastating effects of fire. “Everything had gone dark from all the smoke,” says Simeon Ross, Senior Developer at Atlassian and volunteer firefighter. 

“The fire front just arrived and it was intense. The other side of the road to us was on fire and there was nothing we could do except try to stop it from jumping over the road. It was extreme; we’re seeing fire behavior that I’d never seen before.” 

According to Atlassian’s recent Return on Action Report, more than 60 percent of workers believe businesses have increased responsibility to address top issues like climate change. “It feels like the time where everyone needs to come together – businesses, governments, everyone – to create real systemic change,” says Shannon.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, says that as a business leader, it is his responsibility to highlight how climate change is affecting people today and calls for urgent action:

“Business leaders and industries have the technology to tackle the huge proportion of the problems that we have today. We need leaders to step up and commit to a net-zero future. The next eight years are critical to decarbonize the planet, and everyone has a role to play.”