“My partner just got a job with Spotify in Stockholm”
On love and relocation to Sweden
The Spotify workforce is diverse and global. It happens a lot that the perfect match between candidate and position spans across continents. So people move to new places, which is fun and developing… for the person that moved for a new exciting job. But what about their loved ones? Putting your life on hold for someone else’s career is a drag. And for the new employee, it’s hard to be your very best self when your family doesn’t get to be. So we want to make sure that the entire family gets a great adventure and the possibilities to go for their own dreams when they move to a new Spotify location.
A lot of our relocations come to Stockholm, Sweden. To make sure that relocated spouses and partners find their way, we’ve set up resources and programs for them to help those who just arrived share knowledge and networks. We partner with a local diversity organization that coaches the relocated partners on how to understand Swedish society, overcome the challenges of settling in a new country, and build on their own dreams. And we offer Swedish classes; Because even though Swedes generally are good at English, understanding the basics of the local language makes life a lot easier in a new city.
It’s important to shine a light on the fact that just like the new Spotifiers bring important additions to the office mix, their partners can make important contributions to the new country mix. Right now, more than half of our Stockholm workforce are non-Swedes and we have more than 70 different nationalities represented in the Stockholm office (globally, that’s about 95 different nationalities). As a group, the re-located partners speak a huge amount of languages, have professional backgrounds in most sectors and come from all different cultures. They come to a country that many of them didn’t know a lot about before the move, where people speak a funny little language and seem obsessed with the Swedish “personal identification number” that you need to obtain before you can do pretty much anything else. It’s a big change for most of them. They are typically extremely motivated to get to know new people and move their lives forward, both personally and professionally, but it can be hard work to do so.
That’s why these programs are so important. If our employees’ partners get to make life in Sweden their own adventure too we as a company get to keep our coveted competence, and Sweden as a society gets a double injection of international talent that makes us better. That’s a win-win-win situation!
