Atlassian Adds AI Enablement to its People Strategy

Atlassian is expanding the role of Avani Solanki Prabhakar, its Chief People Officer, to also cover AI enablement. 

This change, Avani says, is because the company is approaching AI as “a cultural transformation first, and a technology shift second”. In her newly expanded role, she will lead a newly integrated People and Transformations team, which brings together its people team and customer engineering. 

The move follows a significant focus on AI for the company, which announced it was cutting 10% of its workforce to focus on AI in March. 

People and transformation

Avani first joined Atlassian as Head of HR for the company’s Asia Pacific region in 2019, progressing to the Chief People Officer role in May 2024. 

In her newly expanded role, she says, she will “focus on unlocking the potential of every Atlassian by pairing cultural and technology transformation together.”

To achieve this, she says the company is “doubling down,” on its experimentation with AI by weaving the technology into essential workflows, while keeping skills development and responsible technology use at the core of its workplace strategy.

The company’s new people and transformation function, Avani says, will bring together “the internal organisation powering how Atlassian itself runs,” – spanning engineering, data science, research insights, customer tech support and strategic initiatives.

Building an AI-enabled workforce  

In March, Mike Cannon Brookes, CEO of Atlassian, announced that the company was cutting around 10% of its workforce to adapt changes brought about by AI. 

In a company memo, Mike said it would be “disingenuous,” to pretend that AI hasn’t changed “the mix of skills or the number of roles,” the company requires. 

Prior to these cuts, Atlassian saw its market value drop – with shares decreasing from US$300 in early 2025 to US$80 at the beginning of March 2026 – as investors showed concerns that AI may disrupt many of the company’s services. 

To mitigate this risk, Mike said the company “made some structural org changes and focused on retaining Atlassians with the skills to help us thrive as an AI-first company – this included strong performers, graduates and Atlassians with transferable skills.”

AI in the C-suite

As AI begins to play a larger role in business strategy, more companies are looking to include it in the C-suite. Research from pltfrm finding that 48% of UK FTSE 100 companies have now appointed a Chief AI Officer – with 42% of those hires taking place in the last twelve months.

More companies are also looking to combine their AI and people strategies to ensure a smoother integration of the technology – such as Lumen, which announced in March that it was expanding the role of its Chief People Officer to Chief People and AI Enablement Officer.

Ana White, who holds the newly created Chief People and AI Enablement Officer, says: “For me, AI is about turning possibility into practice – empowering our people with the skills, tools and confidence to enhance decision making while keeping humans firmly in the loop. It also means scaling responsibly, with clear accountability and transparency, so our progress is fast and sound.”

According to Lumen, this newly created role involves developing new ways of working to ensure that its employees have the skills and capabilities they need for an AI-enabled workplace. It will also cover aligning the company’s wider culture with its internal AI strategy.