“When I was young, my father tried to convince me not to do HR. So just to annoy him, I went to work in HR!” he laughs.

Luijke did a Masters in HR in his home country of the Netherlands and went to work for a local manufacturing company, DSM, as an HR officer. But like so many young graduates, he decided that he’d like to work abroad.

 

Therefore, when an opportunity came up to work for the Australian government’s department of employment and workplace relations in Canberra, he grabbed it with both hands. From there, Luijke moved to Sydney and into the private sector again after being taken on by psychometric testing tools firm, Chandler Macleod, in 2004.

“I learned a lot in both places,” he remembers. “I learned about the complexity of a government, while Chandler Macleod was a much faster-moving environment and I learned a lot about business and P&Ls.”

In 2008, however, Luijke moved on to join collaboration and development tool firm, Atlassian.

 

“I’m focused on building a company that’s still around in the next 100 years,” he says. “Atlassian is widely regarded as not just a very successful Australian company, but also an extremely innovative company. It has been voted the fifth best place to work in Australia.”

 

What sets it apart from most companies, Luijke believes, is that thinking differently is core to the way in which it operates. “If you’re not agile enough or innovative enough, then another company working in your backyard will come up with a product that will take all your customers,” he observes.

 

 

One of the ways that the firm attempts to encourage innovation, meanwhile, is through its “FedEx days”. Every quarter, the entire organisation stops work on a Thursday at 12 o’clock and works on their own new ideas.

 

Within 24 hours (the longest time that it takes FedEx to deliver a package), they are expected to deliver it. “It’s an incredible way to foster creativity and to think differently,” Luijke says. “A lot of product innovation is a direct effect of these innovation days.”

But this approach starts with each new graduate intake. New recruits are sent away to a big house together, where the idea is to have fun, but also to come up with a fresh product within a week and present it to the rest of the organisation.

 

On the other hand, having what Luijke describes as a “healthy state of paranoia” also helps the 10 year-old firm in its bid to keep one step ahead of the competition and is the reason that it has doubled in size over the last two years, he believes.

“As the business is growing so rapidly, it’s important to scale our values and culture, and we’re looking to double again in the next few years,” he says. “You see that kind of growth with a lot of tech companies, but with that pace of growth you have to ensure that the culture and company values remain strong to ensure you don’t bury yourself under bureaucracy.”

Such growth also means that recruitment is a key focus for the company. But Luijke is currently focused on striking the right balance between hiring high quality recruits and ensuring that enough positions are filled to keep it on track.

 

“We have a good pool of high-quality people, but not enough to sustain the growth we’re likely to have in the next two to three years,” he explains. “So, although we’re well known in the software community here, around 30% of all new hires come from overseas, from the States, Europe and Brazil.”

 

This situation also saw Atlassian come to Europe in April in order to recruit 15 senior software developers who were willing to make the move to the firm’s headquarters in Sydney.

 

 

Instead of the usual recruitment fair, it tried to whip up interest by arriving at its target cities in a bus. On board were a team from its engineering department and, at each location, they picked up job applicants and spent an evening talking to them informally over beers about the company and about Australia. More formal interviews were then conducted over the following few days.

On top of the obvious attractions of the sun and the lifestyle that Sydney can offer, there is also the fact that: “At the moment, the European economy is struggling – in sharp contrast to Australia, where the economy is steaming ahead,” Luijke points out.

It also helps that it is relatively easy for software developers with sought-after skills to get through Australia’s immigration and visa process.

But while it obviously costs money to fly to Europe and visit various countries in person, Luijke maintains that the costs are favourable compared with going down the traditional agency route, where up to 20% of a new recruit’s starting salary can go on fees.

 

For the price of hiring a bus, the company gets to meet people face-to-face and generates brand awareness at the same time. To drum up interest, members of the entire workforce were also encouraged to use their networks to spread the word and tweet about what was happening.

As head of HR in a software firm, it is hardly surprising that Luijke is somewhat of a technology evangelist. But he believes that it is one area in which HR professionals really need to up their game.

 

“HR heads need to be more tech-savvy,” he advises. They shouldn’t just pass the buck to the IT department when it comes to choosing software and they should consider the benefits of using tools such as instant messaging and group chat in order to bring people together.

 

“Traditional HR focuses are things like skills and recruitment. We should also be adding value to our businesses,” Luihe says. And he believes that the innovative use of technology is one way of doing it.

 

And finally…

Who do you admire most and why?
Dan Pink, an American author and journalist, who challenges the idea that the way to incentivise people is through money. He argues that autonomy, mastery and purpose are what chivvy people on. “I admire Dan Pink for making the world rethink how to incentivise and motivate their workforces,” Luijke says.

What’s your most hated buzzword?
The idea that “HR needs a seat at the top table”.

What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve received?
The HR department has to add value and create value and it needs to do so much more than shuffling paper.

How do you relax?
I paint. I love it, but I’m not saying I’m the new Rembrandt! And the other thing is that as I’m in Australia so I’m able to travel to new countries in Asia.