Our time in Stockholm has been a blast, especially being able to go to The Head Quarters of Spotify, a globally renowned company! Also, visiting SAAB was very eye-opening.
When speaking with the Head of Business Area Aeronautics of SAAB, Lars Tossman, we were very surprised by the lack of emphasis on Sustainability and Swedish traits that we have seen in other Swedish companies.
Spotify is currently trying to be one of the biggest audio platforms in the world. They started off with streaming music and are now adding podcasts and audiobooks to their platform. Even though Spotify is very well known across the globe, they are still operating at a loss, which is very surprising considering the market share and company culture they possess.
Company culture is something that is very important to the CEO at Spotify. They allow their employees to cultivate positive working relationships across all departments, which is part of their “band manifesto.” They also take their Swedish values and carry them out across all their international offices. Part of these includes a 40-hour work week, six months of paid parental leave, and their work-from-anywhere policy. These differ from traits of United States business culture because most companies do not give six months off paid to both the mother and father when having a newborn. Also, many United States companies are starting to require their employees to return to the office at least once per week. At Spotify, with their work-from-anywhere policy, employees can choose their “mix” to either work from home or go into a Spotify office. However, one specific trait they have that strays from Swedish culture is the ability to make decisions quickly, as their work-from-anywhere policy was dropped before any business shutdowns happened in Europe and the United States. Spotify values protecting their employees before responding to any external events, as can be seen when they ensured all their employees in Russia were safe before posting and responding to the war with Ukraine. Due to Spotify’s global presence, they have integrated outside values with their Swedish values to create a company that everyone wants to work for, as seen in their monthly numbers of 114,000 applications on average. Visiting their HQ was an incredible experience, especially being able to hear from one of the VPs of Human Resources, Anna Lundström!
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