Our Ways of Working Survey Results: Listening, learning and Leaping Forward

At Spotify, our employees’ flexibility is rooted in our culture. Our Work From Anywhere program embodies this, supporting Spotifiers to choose where they work best in order to bring their most authentic and impactful selves. We believe work can be achieved from anywhere, it does not need to be completed in an office.This perspective allows us to tap into new talent pools, retain existing talent and ultimately become more efficient by streamlining how we work across Spotify. We are therefore able to lean into the future of work because we’ve seen these benefits firsthand.

We thrive in unchartered territory and often find it challenges us to refine our ways of working enabling us to work smarter and more productively whilst being cognisant of our wellbeing. In fact, we want to proactively enhance employees’ wellbeing – and for that we must listen up. While we’re always listening, we use our annual survey about Ways of Working to check in with Spotifiers and specifically to look at themes and trends.

This year, we got great feedback that highlights what Spotifiers think is working well and areas where we can improve. Here are some the headlines:

1. Spotifiers appreciate work from anywhere. 

Our employees love the flexibility and choice that working from anywhere brings. It means they can personalise their days around the work they have to do, whilst being in the most productive environment for them. They see the choice we give them as a sign of trust. And they appreciate knowing that we value impact and outcome over work location in our daily work and growth opportunities. 

2. We continue to find ways to support Spotifiers and each other.

Spotifiers also acknowledged that we’re on this journey together. They said they’re ready and willing to iron out the creases in ways of working because of the high value they place on flexibility. Our band members are looking for opportunities to learn best practices from each other, to find more ways to work transparently and inclusively. We see an opportunity to further streamline and curate communication about the ways of working, to encourage and increase knowledge sharing across Spotify teams. 

3. We strive for a balanced blend of synchronous and asynchronous work.

Productivity has remained high since we started Work From Anywhere. To remain productive and support Spotifers’ wellbeing, we need to ensure that meetings help, not hinder productivity. We will be more cognisant about the purpose of meetings and ask ourselves how we can continue to work across distributed time zones without just relying on meetings to move projects forward. Together and as teams, we will continue to find the right blend of asynchronous and synchronous work to suit our daily work and contribute to the collaborative effort. We also acknowledge that depending on whether you’re in the room or not for a meeting affects a Spotifier’s experience and feeling of inclusion, so we will continue to focus on creating equitable experiences so that all  Spotifiers can communicate, contribute and collaborate equally. We’ll also keep encouraging teams to proactively establish agreements on how they can best work together, creating or refining norms they may have established during the height of the pandemic and not since revisited. We acknowledge the benefits of better meetings, as well as making time for asynchronous work and believe that with different tasks and jobs, this has to be done largely by the teams themselves with the expectation that everyone has a role to play. 

4. Our workplaces are valued. 

Whilst social time and collaboration are cited as the main reasons to work from the office, many Spotifiers also come to focus, and appreciate the variety in spaces. Whilst we see daily and weekly shifts and even seasonal shifts in the utilisation of our offices, Spotifiers see our spaces as connection points to bring people together, whether or not the people are part of their direct teams or simply colleagues who work side-by-side. They also see them as separation points that support their work-life and life-work balance.

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One of the most common pieces of feedback was to look into how we gather, how many times we meet in person, and how we make the most of bonding as teams when we’re physically in the office space, but our colleagues are not. What this all looks like in a world where we are given the flexibility to choose where we work, aim to be more sustainable, travel less, and be efficient with our time is something we will dig deeper into.

Overall, the survey reiterated to us that one size does not fit all, and that embracing flexibility alongside trust gives us a massive advantage in terms of employee satisfaction, sense of belonging and better work-life balance. 

What’s next? We’ll build on this momentum, evolve based on our learnings, embrace our boldness and keep listening to our people.