Over the past couple of decades, Swedish music-streaming company Spotify has revolutionized the way people consume music. From its launch in 2006, the platform made an immediate impact with its intuitive functionality and hyper-personalized user experience, giving listeners instant access to a world of new songs and artists.
For CHRO Anna Lundström, this human-centric approach has been a guiding principle. “A successful people strategy demands close connection and cross-functional collaboration,” she says. “To drive effective programs across the organization, CHROs need to genuinely understand every part of the business.”
Having already spent nearly ten years in various HR roles at Spotify, Lundström has a firm grasp of what makes every aspect of the business tick. She has drawn on this knowledge to set three key objectives for 2025: become AI-ready, nurture a strong and vibrant company culture, and personalize employee well-being.
We champion flexibility and are not the type of company to micro-manage. But we do want to empower employees to keep learning.
From the early algorithms that enabled personalized music recommendations, to the new AI DJ feature that curates playlists for listeners, the Spotify platform has, for some time, been integrating technologies such as machine learning (ML) and AI.
But Lundström wants to take the company’s use of new technologies to the next level. One of her main priorities is to embed it in day-to-day operations. Working closely with Gustav Söderström, the co-president and dual chief product officer (CPO) and chief technology officer (CTO), she has introduced AI training and tools for all employees.
“Rolling this out in a collaborative way has been very effective,” Lundström confirms. “Söderström speaks from his own deep experience with AI and how it is integrated into the Spotify product, and I oversee the training and employee engagement to ensure it lands well across every department.”
Although some training is strongly encouraged, Spotify’s overall approach to learning is driven by a culture of accountability. The company aims to provide all the tooling and resources employees need to succeed, but the individual must drive their own growth and development. This philosophy has grown out of the flexible work environment that Spotify has long been developing. While many companies are scaling back their hybrid work arrangements, for example, Spotify employees can still work from anywhere.
“We champion flexibility and are not the type of company to micro-manage. But we do want to empower employees to keep learning,” Lundström says.
To this end, the company decided to open up its annual Hack Week, originally introduced to encourage breakout innovation among R&D staff. This year, everyone in the company was invited to experiment with AI. Teams were encouraged to brainstorm and pitch new AI use cases related to their roles. As a result, Spotify saw a surge in internal AI project submissions.
To keep up the momentum generated by Hack Week and the training programs, the leadership team has asked employees and managers to share, on an ongoing basis, how they’re working with AI through its AI Momentum Program. This initiative will allow the leadership to track adoption levels across the company and motivate teams to integrate AI usage into their day-to-day operations, whatever their function.
“Lundström and her team have introduced “band jams” – regular digital workshops where managers and their teams discuss company values.”
Over the past five years, Spotify has grown exponentially, tripling its revenue and boasting 696 million monthly active users in the first half of 2025. While this rapid growth is exciting, Lundström is keen to protect the company’s unique culture going forward.
“Our product and business have changed significantly over the past few years and will only continue to evolve,” she says. “As this happens, I want to make sure our employee experience remains genuine. That will be vital to attracting and retaining top talent.”
The employee experience is now a core aspect of change management practices, with transformation fatigue a significant concern. At Spotify, this means staying close to the company’s Swedish roots. Spotify follows a progressive, non-hierarchical leadership model, where management is encouraged to delegate tasks and empower employees to make decisions.
To help ensure adoption and implementation of this model across the company, Lundström and her team have introduced “band jams” – regular digital workshops where managers and their teams discuss company values, how these values affect them as individuals, and how they should evolve as business priorities shift.
“It’s an opportunity for us to hear firsthand which parts of our culture are working and which are no longer relevant,” Lundström adds. “That feedback was invaluable during recent periods of change, and it will remain key as we explore how our culture should evolve while the company works toward new goals and ambitions over the next decade.”
Ultimately, we want to create a culture where employees can support both themselves and each other.
The third area of priority for Lundström is employee well-being. While Spotify has been active in this field for many years (for example, in 2018 the company launched Heart & Soul, an initiative raising awareness around mental health issues), Lundström sees an opportunity to build this out further.
“Heart & Soul helped remove the stigma around mental health,” she explains. “It started by having a small number of ambassadors from all levels of the organization share their personal experiences. We also invited external inspirational speakers to talk about their life events, helping normalize the conversation around mental health. This made people feel more comfortable about opening up, but we realized we needed to complement the storytelling with more practical tools tailored to each individual.”
Earlier in 2025, Lundström and her team launched a new internal platform, Modern Health by Heart & Soul, that allows employees to design their own well-being program, which can incorporate everything from therapy sessions to financial or legal advice, with access to a 24/7 support line. Determined to move away from a one-size-fits-all solution, Lundström and her team collaborated with an external solutions provider to create a tool that serves employees in more than 40 countries.
The initiative comes on top of Spotify’s already generous employee benefits. The company supports a healthy work-life balance – another hallmark of its Swedish heritage – through multiple flexible arrangements, including extended parental leave and movable whole-company holidays.
With employee burnout at an all-time high, these policies can make a meaningful difference. Research has repeatedly shown that flexible working arrangements can help prevent burnout as they allow employees to better manage both personal and work-related stress.
“Ultimately, we want to create a culture where employees can support both themselves and each other,” says Lundström. “Transparency has proven to be key here. Whether it’s on AI, culture, or mental health, people at Spotify are open to sharing their knowledge and experience, leading to closer and more effective collaboration.”
As Spotify prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2026, Lundström’s laser focus on AI adoption, learning, and connection is positioning the company for another double-decade of success.
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