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Employee Training and Development at Spotify: Learn From the Best Learning Organizations

Global HR

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Author

Lorelei Trisca

Published

February 04, 2025

Last Update

February 10, 2025

Table of Contents

How does Spotify enable employee learning and development?

The keys to Spotify's L&D success

How can you run a development process like Spotify?

“Any organization that chooses not to invest in their people will stop growing, and every organization that does not add the right people, in the right time, to mix with their homegrown talent and adjust their organizational design accordingly, will find themselves losing their momentum and their competitive advantage.”Katarina Berg, Chief Human Resources Officer, Spotify.

Learning and development are critical factors that drive success at Spotify, the world’s top music streaming platform. For them, learning is not just a trendy word in a corporate values document nobody reads. It is part of their business and ingrained in their DNA.

Spotify believes continuous learning and personal development are crucial to success and growth and gaining an edge over competitors. Therefore, Spotify invests heavily in providing its employees ample opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge.

This article explores Spotify’s approach to learning and development in greater detail. We will delve into the various initiatives and programs that the company has in place to help employees stay on top of the latest technology trends and advancements and how these have contributed to both individual and company success.

Learn all about
  • Spotify’s learning and development philosophy
  • How and why they use expected employee characteristics
  • How the “Steps framework” approach fosters growth and development
  • How Spotify’s culture of innovation, engagement, and individualized focus promotes holistic growth
  • The role of senior leadership in promoting a growth mindset
  • How they ensure that continuous growth and improvement are not just isolated events but ingrained in the company’s DNA

Disclaimer: The data outlined in this content is accurate at the time of publishing and is subject to change or updating. Deel does not make any representations as to the completeness or accuracy of the information on this page.

How does Spotify enable employee learning and development?

Spotify encourages its workforce to stay updated with the latest technology trends and advancements from day one. The company provides employees with various resources, including online courses, workshops, and training sessions, to help expand their knowledge and expertise.

“Growth is our mantra. So at Spotify, we don’t just ask you to embrace learning, we ask you to own it. When you do, you’ll find all the guidance and support you need to truly thrive.”Life at Spotify.

Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, personally believes in always staying curious and investing in continuous learning. The same sentiment is shadowed by Spotify’s Chief HR Officer, Katarina Berg: “The only certainty in tech is change.”

Spotify’s learning and development initiatives are not just limited to technical skills. The company also places a strong emphasis on personal and professional growth. Employees are encouraged to explore their passions and interests. They get the freedom to pursue projects that align with their goals and aspirations.

Autonomy not only helps them grow as individuals but also helps them contribute to the company’s growth and success.

“Career [at Spotify] is all about growth. But this does not mean a linear career. Career is all about developing where you want to develop to be able to take on a bigger scope or a more exciting project.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

Spotify thoughtfully rewards high performance. It’s not just about achieving goals—it’s also about the learning and growth that happens along the way.

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One-on-ones and development conversations

One-on-one meetings allow employees and their leaders to set goals, correct course, and discuss ambitions. These meetings complement development talks, which can happen as often as the employee and the manager feel they are needed. The recommendation is to have them at least twice a year.

“Weekly one-on-ones with the managers are where the [development] magic happens.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse, Talent Growth, and Community X at Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

Spotify has an AI-powered internal talent marketplace, Echo

Echo is an internal talent marketplace launched by Spotify that uses AI to match people’s skills, experience, and development goals with growth opportunities, such as projects and mentorships.

The platform enables hiring managers, project owners, and mentors to work with talent worldwide and expand beyond traditional backgrounds. It amplifies growth opportunities for all employees, from recent college grads seeking mentorship to senior leaders wanting to give back.

“I’ve been using Echo almost as a career shopping site.”Mathilde, Senior Analyst at Spotify.

Echo goes beyond traditional growth opportunities, highlighting part-time projects and mentorships across multiple disciplines and filling critical talent gaps.

“[Echo] is all about increasing movement in the company, increasing development, and also making all the opportunities more transparent. It’s a way of scaling as well. It’s also making it [growth] more equitable.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

Spotify’s distributed-first culture and commitment to Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging (DIB) are at the core of Echo’s design, ensuring inclusivity and removing biases.

One year after implementation, ECHO showed exciting results for Spotify:

  1. More than 6,000 of our band members have engaged with Echo throughout the first year
  2. Over 70% of the project assignments and 50% of the mentorship assignments have been made cross departments or between employees in different location and/or countries

Social learning: Taking advantage of peer knowledge

Spotify believes that one of the most effective ways to foster a learning culture is through social interaction and mutual teaching. This shared responsibility for learning creates an interconnected, dynamic environment where knowledge flows freely, and learning becomes integral to daily interactions.

“All Spotifiers are responsible for their own learning, and the expectation is that they learn from each other and teach each other. The GreenHouse team [...] supports Spotifiers in driving their own development as well as the development of others around them. Some call this approach peer-to-peer learning, we call it Play it forward, and we think it’s one of the best ways to keep learning happening.”Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify.

Echo, the Greenhouse learning portal, and Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) at Spotify enable social learning at the workplace:

  • Echo offers the possibility of finding mentors or mentees, thus catering to those who want to develop their technical, leadership, or coaching skills
  • With the learning portal, one can sign up for face-to-face or virtual sessions in several different areas and topics
  • ERGs, voluntary, employee-led groups, offer tools and resources for community development. Senior members of the group also share their experiences, providing valuable insights and mentorship to newer members

spotify-employee-resource-group.png Spotify BLK | Spotify ERG for Black employees

“Some of the brightest people in the industry work at Spotify, so there will be plenty of opportunities to learn from your colleagues. Preparing and holding a course or a workshop is also a great way to learn even more about a subject.”—Anders Ivarsson, Former Organizational coach at Spotify, Personal development at Spotify.

Business Driven Action Learning (BDAL)

The Business Driven Action Learning at Spotify is a carefully curated initiative that aims to bring together a diverse group of 16 individuals from various departments and age groups. The program provides a unique opportunity for the selected individuals to learn from each other and apply their newfound knowledge to their respective job roles while aligning with the organization’s business goals.

The selection process for these individuals is meticulous, with managers considering growth potential, performance, and overall potential to excel. The chosen individuals may be rising stars, high-performing employees, or those with significant growth potential.

By bringing together a diverse group of individuals with different backgrounds and experiences, the training program at Spotify facilitates cross-functional collaboration, which is essential in today’s dynamic business environment. Plus, the program empowers individuals to learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses, resulting in a well-rounded and highly skilled team that can effectively tackle challenges.

The technical career path at Spotify: The Steps framework

Spotify has a Steps career path framework for its employees. Career development of Spotifiers progresses through four distinct steps:

  1. Individual: This stage marks the beginning of an employee’s career at Spotify. At this level, they are still learning the ropes and figuring out how to be productive and make meaningful contributions to the organization
  2. Squad/Chapter: As employees become contributing members of a team, they become valuable resources for their colleagues, helping them achieve success daily
  3. Tribe/Guild: With time and experience, employees will develop specialized knowledge in a particular technology or become skilled at solving complex problems that span multiple business units. They become valuable resources beyond their immediate team and contribute to the success of their tribe or guild
  4. Technology/Company: The highest level of career development at Spotify is marked by employees who have become valuable resources to the entire organization. They leverage their technical expertise and leadership skills to drive success across the company, collaborating with colleagues from different business areas and making an impact far beyond their immediate team

Each step clearly defines the expectations and expected impact of the work. As a result, employees have a roadmap for their career development.

spotify-career-path-1.png Expectations at Individual level | Source: Spotify's Engineering Blog

spotify-career-path-4.png Expectations at Tribe & Guild level | Source: Spotify Engineering Blog

“The goal was to create a framework that would make sense with our culture, work for employees at all levels of experience, and in many different (some unique) roles.”Kevin Goldsmith, former VP of Engineering at Spotify.

Leadership development programs

Leadership development at Spotify starts with their Manager Manifesto, which explains the clear expectations. They run two core leadership development programs—the management act program and the leadership act program. On top of these, there are further ad-hoc programs to cover key and trending topics, such as leading a distributed team, managing diverse teams, etc.

The courses are a healthy mix of self-placed, cohort-based, facilitator-led, and recorded videos. It provides ample variety for individuals to choose from based on their learning styles.

This year alone [2024], we have run 58 manager and leadership programs to make sure as many of our leaders as possible have a strong foundation to stand on when they steer the ship through the storms. These programs are the foundation of our leadership culture and the Spotify way.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse, Talent Growth, and Community X at Spotify.

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The keys to Spotify's L&D success

Spotify is a company that has significantly impacted the music industry by changing how people consume and discover music. But what’s equally impressive is their success in their employees’ learning and development (L&D).

In fact, Spotify has become a case study for other companies in creating a successful L&D program. So, what’s the key to their success?

1. Making learning a core component a part of DNA

Incorporating learning into every facet of Spotify’s people processes is core to their learning philosophy.

“Personal development is more than going to a course once per year; it’s something that happens every day.”—Anders Ivarsson, Organizational coach at Spotify, Personal development at Spotify.

By making learning a fundamental part of all processes and approaches, Spotify ensures that continuous growth and improvement are not just isolated events but ingrained in the company’s DNA.

“Embed learning into everything you do. Into all your approaches, all your processes. It has to be alive everywhere.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

2. Having a dedicated L&D team—Spotify GreenHouse

Spotify’s Learning and Development (L&D) team, GreenHouse, operates like gardeners, cultivating a thriving environment for growth. Their focus goes beyond providing learning materials—they create the conditions for continuous learning, agility, and innovation.

GreenHouse offers a diverse range of learning tools and methods, emphasizing both what to learn and how to learn. They also equip managers with the skills to be strong coaches and mentors, fostering a culture of development at every level. Johanna Bolin Tingvall stresses the role of leadership as owners and promoters of growth:

“Talk about this with senior leaders, with the CEO, and with the leadership team because it needs to start there. I don’t think that we can have an HR leader that owns learning. It has to be owned by everyone, including the lead team.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

As a result, GreenHouse ensures that growth remains a shared responsibility endorsed by high leadership and drives long-term adaptability and innovation.

“Our learning philosophy is very much connected to our culture. We have a very strong learning culture. And if you ever hear our CEO talking about where we’re going, he always talks about growth. He talks about learning. He talks about how we need to grow as a company and how we need to grow as human beings.

And innovation is very much about learning. Isn’t it? Because if we’re doing things we’ve never done before, then learning will be a part of that.”—Johanna Bolin Tingvall, Global Head of GreenHouse - Learning & Development, Talent Growth & CommunityX, Spotify, in an interview with the HR Over the Counter podcast.

3. Providing clear career paths

45% of US employees don’t know what is expected of them at work. It leads to detachment at work. Spotify ensures its employees don’t go through these issues by giving them a clear career path. Employees know a way forward for their advancement in the organization.

4. Enabling continuous feedback

Spotify approaches manager-team relationships in a player-coach model. Like coaches, managers provide continuous feedback to team members to help them perform at their best.

McKinsey found that 77% of employees who get continuous feedback are more motivated by the company’s performance management. It fosters a culture of continuous growth, driving both employee and company development.

5. Investing in social learning

Spotify promotes social and peer learning through cohort programs, boot camps, Echo, and ERGs.

Social learning is also one of the most impactful forms of learning, as stressed by the 70:20:10 learning model that suggests:

  • 70% of learning comes from experiences and assignments
  • 20 % comes from exchanges with peers
  • 10% comes from formal training

The learning and development team spends considerable time on the last 10%, but social learning shifts focus on the more impactful 90%.

Some top benefits of implementing social learning in the workplace are:

  1. Promoting skill-sharing and passing on knowledge
  2. Improving team collaboration and productivity
  3. Making learning more inclusive

6. Promoting mentorship programs

Spotify provides opportunities for employees to find mentors through the Echo platform. Mentorship and coaching provide personalized guidance to employees to help them succeed.

Employees are also looking to work with companies ready to support their growth. 47% of companies are investing in career mentoring and coaching to boost employee retention.

7. Incorporating different learning styles

Spotify provides a healthy mix of training of different types (cohort, self-paced, instructor-led, etc.) and keeps it open for self-nomination. Employees can choose the training they wish to do from the internal learning management system.

8. Continuously measuring the impact of programs

Spotify doesn’t throw darts in the dark and assume it hits when it comes to learning programs. They continuously assess the impact of their L&D initiatives by collecting data. But it’s tricky as the impact may not always be linear and simply measurable.

Johanna Bolin Tingvall, highlights: “When you as HR and L&D professionals are asked to state the ROI or business impact from the development activities, don’t get stuck in only direct measurements or think that everything needs to be counted. Look at the bigger picture. And remember that learning employees are curious employees.

Curiosity comes with engagement, and engaged employees will be more easily retained, and will affect productivity.”

To mitigate the ambiguities of measuring L&D success, Spotify embraces creativity and a mix of direct and indirect assessment methods:

  1. Team maturity assessments measure the development of teams over time, highlighting how they are becoming higher-performing teams
  2. Training evaluation surveys are conducted at the end of training sessions, seeking to determine if the users saw the learning session as useful and if they think they can apply the information in their work
  3. Skill assessments measure individual growth
  4. 360-degree assessments that measure leadership development and track behavior change over time

In addition to these more traditional tools, Spotify works with the People analytics team to draw correlations or patterns that can indicate development. They also use data from other sources, such as:

How can you run a development process like Spotify?

Deel Engage helps you run a people development process like Spotify. Here is a step-by-step breakdown:

Define career paths

With the career module on Deel Engage, you can define competency models and expectations for every role and way ahead in the organization. These transparent career paths give team members clarity on which areas they need to work on. Furthermore, these plans become a base cheat sheet for managers to drive development conversations.

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Career progression framework with leveling and role expectations on Deel Engage

Follow these steps for creating comprehensive career progression frameworks with Deel Engage:

  1. Create career frameworks for each department. E.g., Sales Team, Customer Success Team, etc. As a starting point, you can use our database of 140+ competencies for ten departments
  2. Add career paths. Create descriptions and leveling for each role within each department in your organization. E.g. Junior, Intermediate, Senior
  3. Define roles and competencies. When defining the competencies, let your managers and HR team have an equal weigh-in. You can also consider consulting your top performers. Include a mix of role-specific (functional), technical, and core competencies
  4. Assign career paths. Involve the manager in reviewing career paths and assigning them to each team member.

Bonus: You can now ask Deel Engage’s AI assistant to help define competencies across levels. Yes, it is that simple.

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Defining competencies with Deel Engage’s AI assistant

Provide a learning management system and enable leaders

With our learning management module, you can centralize all the learning content and bring all courses on one platform.

You can design unique employee journeys using various building blocks such as content, messages, surveys, quizzes, tasks, and feedback collection. You can create your learning journeys and add them to the library for your employees. Then, you can assign learning journeys to employees, allow your people to self-enroll, or do both.

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Creating learning journeys with Deel Engage’s AI assistant

With Deel Engage, you can also take advantage of existing learning content. Upload SCORM files to your learning library. Alternatively, you can upload PDF-based courses and ask the Engage AI assistant to transform them into learning journeys.

Use the LMS features to create training programs for your leaders and enhance their coaching skills.

Create development plans

Managers and team members can mutually discuss and define development plans tailored to career paths, individual interests, and growth potential. Development plans allow for setting concrete goals and action items (such as courses, certifications, shadowing activities, etc.) and timelines to achieve them.

Check-in with your employees frequently

Deel Engage enables managers to maintain regular check-ins with team members through its Slack plug-in 1:1 feature. The plug-in helps to set recurring meetings, define agendas, and note discussion points. It is key for enabling frequent coaching conversations between managers and their team members.

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Deel Engage’s 1:1 meeting Slack plug-in

Conduct surveys to get feedback

You can also collect feedback for courses and learning initiatives by running surveys. This survey data will help you double down on what’s working and eliminate what doesn’t create any meaningful impact.

Deel supports the entire worker lifecycle at every stage, from hiring, onboarding, continuous learning, and feedback.

Book a demo to see how to build the best talent development programs.

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About the author

Lorelei Trisca is a content marketing manager passionate about everything AI and the future of work. She is always on the hunt for the latest HR trends, fresh statistics, and academic and real-life best practices. She aims to spread the word about creating better employee experiences and helping others grow in their careers.

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