ORGANISATION & CULTURE
This‘ bandmate’ culture, the company says in its culture manifesto, means that it needs all employees to be in sync, as everyone is“ dependent on each other to create the best experience.” To scale this model to more than 7,000 employees worldwide, Spotify has built a people strategy designed to align employees on its wider mission while building learning opportunities to give staff room to grow. Anna Lundström, Chief HR Officer at Spotify, says of the company’ s culture:“ Our culture is built on giving our bandmates runway to exercise good judgment and move fast wherever they sit, whatever their title.“ We have a fun – and dare I say unique – creative environment where we empower and inspire people to do the best work of their careers.” To build this environment, the company has created five cultural values – innovation, sincerity, passion, collaboration and playfulness. Designed to give its‘ band members’ support and autonomy, these values were developed by employees – more than 70 were suggested in workshops, and staff voted on these options to reach a final five. Together, these values encourage staff to take risks, give candid feedback, care about the company mission, work with others across the organisation and share in success.
We’ ve built a culture of trust and flexibility where people feel empowered to be creative and have the ability to drive impact
Anna Lundström Chief Human Resources Officer Spotify
Anna says:“ We’ ve built a culture of trust and flexibility where people feel empowered to be creative and have the ability to drive impact. It’ s something I’ m so proud of, and it is heavily influenced by our Swedish roots.”
The‘ Keeper Test’ Similarly, Netflix has prioritised cultivating a team of high performers as part of its wider culture strategy – a group the company refers to as its‘ Dream Team.’ It has developed this strategy through its‘ culture memo,” originally developed by Netflix Co-founder Reed Hastings as a 125-page PowerPoint presentation in 2009. This manifesto has been revised several times since then to best encompass the experiences of its global workforce of around 14,000 people.
72 June 2026