The Key to Great HR? KISS
People are often surprised to learn that we do a lot of KISSing in HR at Spotify: Keeping It Simple, Silly. You’ve probably heard of this principle before, or perhaps you’re familiar with its cousins: “Keep It Short and Simple”; Shakespeare’s “Brevity is the soul of wit”; , or Thoreau’s “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify”, later modified by the red pen of Steve Jobs to “Simplify, Simplify, Simplify”.
Simplicity is the core principle of our HR philosophy. We talk a lot about the principle of “One HR” on our team here at Spotify. Whether you’re a recruiter, an HRBP, a compensation specialist or a Greenhouse team member, we all operate under the same set of principles aimed at providing a consistent HR experience for our employees and leaders. And keeping it simple informs how we navigate the “controlled chaos” of our business. For example, all of our policies and practices are designed to be applied globally and adapted locally – not the other way around. As HR Business Partners, our job is to create clarity amid complexity. We distill data, information, human behavior, and organizational psychology into a digestible talent strategy that enables our colleagues.
Get the Best Tomatoes
As much as we love simplicity, it turns out it’s actually a pretty hard thing to do well. It can often be tempting to approach complex challenges with complex solutions but in our world, we strive to provide straightforward and rational answers.
We often like to think of our HR Partnerships team like a team of chefs, and our business stakeholders are our diners. So let’s say at our HR restaurant, we learn that a team of visiting dignitaries is coming to eat. What to make?! Surely the best, most delicious dishes using the most stunning, exotic ingredients. With this thinking we might start with a crisp, refreshing AI-driven succession plan with a light truffle sauce. After that perhaps a rich and layered compensation review process with a side of caviar. And to finish, a delectable passion fruit-infused, multi-year leadership development program. Sounds delicious, right? Maybe, but it also sounds labor intensive, expensive and fussy.
On the contrary, using the KISS approach means dinner at our restaurant would be a pizza, in an all-day café, and not a white tablecloth in sight. “Pizza? For the world’s best and brightest!” you might say. Well, yes – it’s simple, but still delicious.
Think about it like this – our pizza isn’t frozen. It’s made with the freshest tomatoes, the creamiest buffalo mozzarella and a perfect crisp and chewy crust. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated but the absolute best ingredients and preparation. We can also take those tomatoes and that mozzarella and make a light, refreshing caprese salad for lunch the next day. Or add some chicken for a parmigiana. Keeping things simple allows us to be fast, adaptable, effective and scalable. Maybe you’re wondering where we sourced or imported such high quality ingredients. Well you might be surprised by the answer: we grew them ourselves, in our backyard (some examples include the Spotify Incentive Mix, Parental Leave Policy, Work From Anywhere program, Disco & Bounce, and Echo).
Home-Grown Teams
One of the keys to our ongoing growth and evolution of our HR team is our deep belief in homegrown talent. Our HR Partnerships organization is made up of two teams: our HR Specialists, who own and execute on our HR policies, and our HR Business Partners, who liaise with Spotify’s leaders to set future-looking talent strategies that enable the business’ success.
In the example of our HR Restaurant, the Specialists source our ingredients and peel, chop, prep and season them to perfection. Our Business Partners set the menu and, alongside the Specialists, cook, bake, fry and sauté the ingredients. The result is served at our cool-but-casual tables to the brilliant technologists and business people that we call our colleagues.
Let’s say our colleagues love the menu so much that they insist on sending their compliments to the chef. Out walks the HR Business Partner, all smiles. “Tell me,” asks one diner, “how long does it take to chop the carrots this finely? And what kind of tomatoes are these?” A good, credible, trustworthy chef needs to be able to answer these questions at any time.
A simple question. Basic, even. However, the HR Business Partner who hasn’t spent the time and effort to learn every detail of the ingredients and the preparation will be left on the back foot and lose credibility with their diners. It’s because of this that we have a team of senior HR professionals who are just as proficient at the HR basics – knowing our policies inside and out, using our values as a constant compass, and putting the people experience first.
Being an HR Business Partner is like being a data scientist, organizational psychologist, business strategist, and clairvoyant all wrapped into one. It’s a heady and influential position to hold in an organization and when done well, can help elevate a business from good to great. But the most tested and true way to adapt, innovate, sustain and create control in the chaos is to keep it simple.
As an HR Partner, whether you’re guiding leaders towards smart hiring decisions, helping develop organizational structures to meet the loftiest goals, or navigating a post-COVID workplace, we suggest that keeping it simple is the key to being able to sustain a strategy for the long haul. This is what will drive impact and ensure that you can show up and deliver as an HR team time and time again, no matter the challenge.
