Startle Me Up: Matcha Madness and Pets on Planes

A permanent karaoke room. A self-service matcha station. A space to watch the sunrise as you practice yoga.

Is this an advertising blurb for a health retreat? Or could this actually represent the workplace of the future?

It’s the latter, if you believe the Australian MD of Pinterest, Melinda Petrunoff. In recently announcing her company’s new office fit out in Sydney, Petrunoff says this is “not about coercing people to work in the office. The best way to meaningfully improve workplace culture is to be purposeful about the time that you want your employees to come together”. Hmmm.

Instead, Pinterest is providing its 70 staff “an excellent option, and letting them decide [about where they work]”. Only 8% of the floorplan is dedicated to traditional desk space, with the remainder made up of flexible environments and themed quiet zones.

On the same day, I read that Virgin Australia will begin trialling pets on flights between Melbourne and the Gold Coast. From $149 a pet, a limit of 4 small dogs and cats weighing less than 8kg (including carrier) will be allowed on board – in the cabin. Virgin’s chief marketing officer, Libby Minogue, says feedback on the initiative has been “overwhelmingly positive”. Its group medical officer, Dr Kelly Bofkin, explains that “aircraft filtration systems will capture 99% of airborne particles, including pet dander”. Upon investigation, I found this to be as gross as it sounds – it’s the small flakes of skin shed by cats and dogs, which can serve as a common trigger for allergies and asthma.

Both of these announcements are certainly attention grabbers. Are we now at a place where organisations need to virtually startle their audiences to be heard, or achieve a break on their competition?

There are some clear benefits to what I call startle culture. In this day and age of clickbait and miniscule attention spans, a story that appears out of the ordinary does hold attention a little bit longer. It can also jolt people into action. If I’m a pet lover, why wouldn’t I consider Virgin next time I fly? And if I can see myself starting work at dawn while doing yoga with work colleagues, then Pinterest might be the place for me.

But what about the drawbacks? Are these the type of things companies want to be known for? I might love the matcha station, but if my boss is not cutting it, the matcha won’t be enough to hold me there. And for an airline, surely the safety and comfort of 180-odd passengers trumps the 4 on each flight delighted that Scraps the dog gets to travel in comfort? Fundamentals of a well-led business will trump the startle story every time.

As an outsider looking in, one wonders how tech organisations in particular are measuring the value created by startling moves. Canva offers chef-prepared lunches. Amazon allows you to bring your dog to work. And in a big show of “startledom”, Atlassian is constructing its new headquarters in Sydney, to be organised as 6 discrete but interconnected “habitats”, employing “the novel use of timber”. The headline grabber is the proposed reduction in Atlassian’s carbon footprint, not how working this way will correct its history of operating losses.

Atlassian’s new Sydney office, under construction. Photo by Lewis Williams

Staff engagement surveys would be one way, but over time we have learned these can leave leadership in a fool’s paradise. They can be structured with a narrow lens to achieve certain outcomes, are influenced by short-term events, and measure the outcomes of organisational culture, not the culture itself.

Employee retention would be another, however the system might be taking care of that for them. Simon Keustenmacher of The Demographics Group, said recently that young Australians are less likely to change jobs today than ever before. ABS statistics for 2025 show that for workers aged 15-24, job mobility sits at 11.5%, down from 23% in 1996. Housing affordability is the main contributor, along with fewer lay-offs. He says workers are “swimming in a shallower opportunity pool”, because “the hurdle of finding affordable accommodation discourages mobility”. These realities could now be trumping the widely-accepted research promoted by Deloitte that Gen Z and Millennials “prioritise purpose and wellbeing in employment decisions”.

The reality facing all businesses in Australia is the sluggish economic growth experienced over the past decade. During that time, the economy has averaged about 2.3% growth annually. In 2024, it was as low as 1.04%. This is despite strong population growth, and stimulus during the COVID years. The underlying drain on the economy remains productivity of our labour force, in part due to many organisations working under the mantra of “doing more with less” for a prolonged period. This might help operating results in the short-term, but as we are now seeing, under-investment in systems and training has caught up with us. And leaving it to AI to achieve productivity growth may not be the play managers can rely on.

If nothing else, the moves by Pinterest and Virgin tick the “innovation” box. But will we be talking about these developments in a decade as turning points in their respective histories? Will they represent sustainable and scalable change in the way we work and travel? Or will they just be treated as gimmicks from a low-growth era?

Improving workplace culture is hard. It starts at the top of an organisation, with stronger cultures modelling transparency and accountability on a daily basis. It’s the small stuff that happens when nobody is watching. And it is created when people work in groups, feed off emotions and build trust. As it always has.

There is nothing startling about that.

Lewis Williams is the Founder of Cadence Leadership Advisory, which offers leadership coaching, team leadership development services and strategy review and organisational culture support. A former banker with significant experience as a leader of people, he is a certified organisational coach, a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and regularly facilitates development programs as Adjunct Faculty with the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM).