Rewarding the Band
Rewarding our band members is an important part of our talent philosophy. Our holistic approach has an impact on how we find our band members, how we retain them and our compensation strategy will most likely also be one of the things that shapes their development during their time in the band.
Here’s how we do it.
Our Goal
We want to create a framework that helps ensure we’re always empowering the right teams to create the right game plans to tackle the right problems. We’re focused on strategically selecting and motivating our band members to achieve the best results.
Our Strategy
We focus on the right band members.
The best people in their field may not be the best people for our band. We put an emphasis on finding the right people every time, rather than just recruiting rock stars.
In our hiring process, we look for three essential factors: adaptability, ability, and drive. We consider where we want to grow and how, using our priorities and values to inform every step of the hiring process.
As Spotify evolves, attrition is natural and ultimately benefits our community, giving band members meaningful opportunities for growth. We do tent pole hires, but more so, we believe in uplifting and investing in our own homegrown talent, helping them expand their skills.
We focus on incentivizing development, rewarding our band members thoughtfully, with a long-term view. At our core, we believe compensation and benefits should be fair, but for the right talent, it won’t be the primary motivator. Band members should value the opportunity to be an audio pioneer and be authentically excited to join our mission of inspiring people to listen to the world around them. In short, we look for missionaries rather than mercenaries.
We focus on the right compensation.
We work hard to ensure that the innovative and passionate people who choose to join the Spotify band are empowered to be their very best. That’s why we prefer to view our compensation and benefits holistically, as a total package, and why we make that total offer competitive versus our peer group.
We believe in rewarding high performance, taking into account a band member’s mastery, contributions, and behavior. A similar position, performance, and potential means similar compensation over time. Offering security while connecting compensation to achievement keeps our teams motivated and reaching for innovation.
Equity is offered to everyone who joins Spotify, enabling them to become shareholders and take part in the future success of the company. Band members have the freedom to choose how to allocate their incentive mix. This flexibility reaffirms our commitment to giving employees more control over their compensation at Spotify.
Beyond cash and equity, our employee benefits program is designed to be competitive in the local market. We offer benefits and perks that are inclusive and aligned with our company values, like global parental leave, flexible public holidays, and other more playful surprises. And these benefits are extended to every band member, regardless of seniority. It’s important to us to create a rewarding, inclusive environment where our band members want to stay and where they know they can grow.
We offer freedom of choice.
Another aspect of our culture is that we expect our employees to be autonomous; We like to provide direction, give choices and make information available, instead of creating policies and heavy administration. We expect people to own their own growth plan. So when we set out to update our long-term incentive program, we were going for maximum flexibility, allowing each individual to choose their own incentive mix.
And we then pair them with the right tasks.
Spotify’s extraordinary rhythm demands extraordinary focus. It’s nearly impossible to be a master of all instruments — something will always end up neglected or shortchanged.
Instead, we expect our band members to give their all to their one part. And then, as we move and grow, that part may change, which requires renewed strategizing and focus.
We believe that it isn’t our responsibility to manage talent – we’re here to develop talent.
By taking a holistic view when hiring, investing, and rewarding our band members, we ensure that Spotify remains at the forefront of audio.
The Outliers
And yes, there are outliers to a compensation strategy – it wouldn’t make good business sense if this wasn’t the case. The people who’s skills and expertise we need right now, and who will solve some of our current challenges, and who also lead by example, and inspire towards mastery.
At our core we focus on home grown talent and promote from within. We’ve designed what we believe to be the right compensations for Spotify – attracting, retaining, engaging and developing our band members.
