23 min watch with captions and full transcript
In this interview, Michael shares his tips for:
Our mistakes are our biggest insights into the future.
In HR it should never be a plug and play, it shouldn’t be a one-size fits all.
DEBRA COREY: Hi, I'm Debra Corey, I am the co-author of Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World Class Employee Engagement. I am here today with Michael Kim who is the Head of HR at Spotify in APAC for a whole week have you been in that role?
MICHAEL KIM: Yep. Been here for a fresh week-and-a-half.
DEBRA COREY: Lovin' it already?
MICHAEL KIM: Lovin' it so far, absolutely.
DEBRA COREY: Actually, Michael just spoke at the conference that we're at in Sydney and did an absolutely brilliant session. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even come up and speak to you afterwards because I think for about two hours people were chasing after you trying to get questions answered.
MICHAEL KIM: It's a good change where I'm usually chasing people to talk to them at work, it's good to be chased once in a while. Excellent opportunity for me to leverage that platform here in my new role to really talk about Spotify's philosophy, our HR drive and passion and share it with this side of the world. What a great start to my new role.
DEBRA COREY: Yes. Spotify's story is so great, which is why I was so keen to chase you down at the conference and speak to you because Spotify is the epitome of being a rebel. Every time I see you or anyone else on the team post something, it is just so rebellious. I just love that you guys just aren't afraid of challenging the status quo and doing things differently. I guess, really, to start with, where does that ethos come from? Is it like hanging up on the walls, we shout be rebels and we shout try to do things different, how does it work?
MICHAEL KIM: I think it really comes from the top. I think it starts from Daniel Ek, our CEO, who at his level disrupted the entire music industry. I think from there it spread across his leads. I think from an HR perspective, it definitely comes from our CHRO, Katarina Berg, who very much instills within the HR organization globally, more a mindset of culture versus benchmarking. Her philosophy is let's disrupt but do so by doing what's in the best interest of our people and not looking at what the norm is.
A lot of great initiatives, such as our Parental Leave Program and our Flexible Public Holidays Program came from that reflection of what's best for our people, and also what's most consistent with regards to our Swedish roots. At the end of the day, Spotify is a Swedish-based company, it was founded in Sweden. When it comes to things like parental leave and work-life balance, Sweden has a very progressive attitude towards that. We build that in and infuse that into our culture as a company. That's our drive from an HR team, when we think and build innovative programs. When we're building it, we don't think of it as a, hey, how innovative can we be, we literally just think of it as simply what's best for our people. Let's use the data that we have, let's use the feedback that we get to build these programs so our people can be set up for success. Anything that comes on top of that, in terms of global recognition, or external recognition, that's just all the cherry on top.
Rebellious is definitely the right word. It's more about being bold, I think, as well and challenging the norm, and not confining ourselves to what the norm is and really just thinking outside of the box. We have the ability to do so and the empowerment to do so because of our philosophy, because of our culture, because of our values, that allows us to think creatively in the space.
DEBRA COREY: When you explain the story about, because you were given the task of looking at parental leave, and I loved how you did say that, "Let's just ignore what's going on outside and let's just ..." I think you used the word, "Give the microphone to your employees," which I did write down, I love that.
MICHAEL KIM: Absolutely.
DEBRA COREY: I think it's just such a smart way to start. You talk about recognition. Were you the first company to do something like that? Many of us have followed in your footsteps.
MICHAEL KIM: No, I don't think so but I think we were one of the first companies that was very authentic in our approach of how to do it. Because our opinion and our strategy was based around what's best for our people, we built this program, even the most minute details around this program, in partnership with our Comp and Ben lead and our HR generalist lead, very much with a focus on what resonates with our people. Because one of the research that we've done when building this program is, just by building a rich program and just throwing out a random number out there of how much time a person has off, isn't really effective. It's more about understanding our people, our culture and understanding and building a culture where people feel empowered to take that amount of time off.
We had identified what was the right balance. Was 12 months too much? Was three months too little? What do we do internally in Sweden and what do our leaders do as part of their culture that works for our people. We ended up with a six-month, fully paid Parental Leave Program. The other important theme here was around inclusivity. A lot of companies have a different program available for mothers and for fathers. Our philosophy around diversity and inclusion is everyone is equal. A new parent is a new parent regardless if you're a surrogate, or you're adopting, or you're a mother, or a father, so it's very important that our policy was
effective for all people at Spotify. We found that six months was the right time because that's the right amount of time that our Swedish employees take during their parental leave off at 100% pay. It was very much targeted towards what's best for our people.
The other big thing that we did was this notion around a Welcome Back Program. A lot of the feedback that we gathered during the build-it phase of this program was that people found it difficult coming back from full-time parenthood to full-time employee. We developed this plan to ease people back into the workforce by giving our employees the opportunity and empowerment to choose how they integrate back in. Some can do it overnight, others might need to work two days a week. Others might need to work from home three days a week. But we give the autonomy to our people to decide and give them that month timeframe to bring people back. That was very much a very Spotify-specific thing. Research shows, when we ran this program, that if you don't have the right culture to enforce this policy, this policy is null and void anyway. A company could give away 12 months free, or a lot of companies are doing unlimited vacation.
DEBRA COREY: Yes, I was thinking of that.
MICHAEL KIM: But what research shows, is that if you don't have the right culture that enforces that and supports that with the people, people actually start taking less time off in fear of retaliation, in fear of not knowing what the norm is. We really set the parental leave program with expectations that we lead from the top, we lead by example. The fact that our most senior leadership within Spotify have taken six-plus months off in parental leave because we're a Swedish-based company, empowered other fathers and mothers and other new parents to feel safe to take that amount of time off, as well. We're seeing it work through the data, we're seeing it because we are going through a bit of a Spotify baby boom right now and people are taking advantage of the full-time off, which is what we intended it to be.
We want people to take off the right amount of time with their family because also, from an HR perspective, our philosophy is, if you have a strong work-life balance, and you're happy at home and you're managing your personal life well, you're more effective in the office, you're a better performer in the office, and you're just happier in the office, as well, which all leads to really great ROI for the company and long-term retainment.
Really good things come out of this program but it was built upon what works best for Spotify. We didn't realize at that time what sort of impact it would have globally.
DEBRA COREY: You mean, like, the President of the United States wanting to talk. How did that all come about?
MICHAEL KIM: Exactly. It came actually, through the White House reaching out to us. When they found out that we were relaunching and revamping our parental leave program, and in partnership, which was consistent with Barack Obama's administration's view on increasing paid leave from a governmental perspective, they wanted to use Spotify as a guiding light and example of what real parental leave should look like in the U.S.
When we launched back in November of 2015, Valerie Jarrett came out and launched in our New York Office, while Daniel Ek launched it in Stockholm with much support from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. We had the honor and privilege of meeting the President of the United States and the Vice President and we were recognized for the great work we did on this program. It was really more about creating awareness in the political landscape in the U.S. more than anything else. But not only did it hit the U.S. political landscape, I think it hit global political landscape. It's something that we're very proud of. We really never intended for that reaction to happen, we were just very humble about it.
DEBRA COREY: But it did inspire lots of other organizations and it made organizations feel that if Spotify can do it then it's something that we should look at and consider at our organizations.
MICHAEL KIM: Yeah, and I think that's what's awesome about working in HR at Spotify is that we are able to have a platform and a voice where we can create change within the HR industry. We take that responsibility very seriously and we leverage our platform very strategically to make sure that we are sending the right consistent message out, and we hope others follow. But at the same time we're also looking at what other innovative companies are doing and learning from them, as well. It's such an exciting space to be in, in HR right now, because I think the landscape is changing drastically, especially with the millennial generation and the new way of thinking of how to manage our workforce.
DEBRA COREY: Different expectations in the workplace. We were just talking about the recent change that you did with public holidays. Do you want to talk a little bit about that one for a moment?
MICHAEL KIM: Yeah, sure. We got some interesting insight from our data that, it's pretty impressive. We have over 93 nationalities working at Spotify globally. This came actually after a speaking event that our global head of diversity did at the UN, where we just shared a little bit more insight with them on. What we found and thought about from there was, well, different nationalities have different beliefs. When you look at the public holiday system that most companies are working off of, they're actually set. They're sometimes set by the government, they're set by the country you're in. We just had this self realization where a lot of people don't celebrate Christmas, yet we give everyone off for Christmas. Some people celebrate other holidays that aren't recognized in our internal calendar or externally. We wanted to flip that. Very simply, what we've provided and offered our employees now is basically for them to choose what public holidays they believe in and swap out those that they don't believe in and swap it for the ones they do.
DEBRA COREY: Which costs the company no more money by doing that at all.
MICHAEL KIM: Yeah.
DEBRA COREY: It's one of those ones we were saying before, why didn't we think of things like this sooner but I don't know of other companies that do this right now. I'm sure now that you shared it in LinkedIn and everywhere else, there'll be more companies considering it.
MICHAEL KIM: I think the PR around that has already gone global, as well. But for us, once again, when that project came together it was very much with this initial mindset of what's best for our people. We didn't think about changing the industry at that point in time, we just heard from our feedback that people have different beliefs, and we have a very diverse workforce and we need to acknowledge that. Really going back to this level of autonomy, as well, trusting our people and making sure that they take the time off that they want that makes most sense for them. Really super exciting initiative that came out of our team, led by one of our HR leads, and it got really positive feedback internally but also externally, as well. But once again innovative externally, but internally it was more of a common sense thing. When Katarina and Alex Westerall who led this initiative shared it with the wider HRLT team, it was almost like, yeah, this is great. It's just something we should do because it's the right thing
to do for our people.
Oftentimes we balance and check ourselves by asking that very simple question in HR, which I love, is this best for our people, is this right for our people. We use that as our North Star guiding light into finding or creating new initiatives. It's a very exciting place to be especially as an HR leader, where you feel empowered to do so.
DEBRA COREY: But where do these ideas come from? Because I think you're right and I love the idea. I almost want to go back to my company and do a health check and make sure that I'm doing that for everything. Are you just picking things off one by one? Are these ideas that an employee goes through a situation, it makes you think maybe I need to do something? Where are you going next with these things?
MICHAEL KIM: I think it's really organic and it's not something forced. I think as an HRLT team, we come together and talk about what our people are talking about on the floor, what's important to them. We do it both through listening but we also do it through data, through our Pulse Surveys or our People Survey. We define our initiatives based on what the people needs are and what the wants are that makes a better workforce environment for us. For us it's very organic. We sit there as an HRLT team and we poke holes in everything. We sit there with a very contrarian view. We let data inform us but not drive us to make those decisions, and we have a healthy debate. We decide what our priorities are, what we're going to focus on and we go 100% from there. That's very much Katarina's leadership style, that's the way that she drives her team. Everything we do is very strategic and has to be relevant for our people. Because if we start launching initiatives that doesn't connect to our people or our overall mission as a company, we're going to start losing credibility as a major organization.
DEBRA COREY: That's one of the common things that I've seen in interviewing rebels, is you don't just be a rebel to be a rebel, you do a rebel in a way that's right for your organization. One of things that I love that you said also was about allowing mistakes. I know in the business world, that';s more prevalent. But in HR, we're supposed to be perfect, so I loved when you said that it's part of your culture in HR to try things.
MICHAEL KIM: Absolutely. I think you don't know what you don't know until you try it and I think sometimes our mistakes are our biggest insights into what works for the future. So learning from our mistakes but creating a culture where it's okay to make mistakes and embrace making mistakes is absolutely critical.
If you're in that kind of performance development or management culture where it's forced distribution if you make a mistake, you're a bottom performer, you create a culture of fear and that kills innovation, that kills collaboration. We've been trying very much on our end to show people that making mistakes is a good thing. There are some functions that actually celebrate mistakes.
DEBRA COREY: I was going to say recognizing it is a good way of saying it's okay.
MICHAEL KIM: And learning from that and learning from the insights of that. I think Spotify was built upon a lot of mistakes that we've learned from and grew and iterated from there. It's, once again, part of our DNA and it's something that we just want to enforce in our culture moving forward given how many new hires are coming onboard. We need to send that message early. You're here for a reason, you're here because you're creative, let's unlock that creativity and not work in a box. But we have to lead by example, and we do that in HR.
DEBRA COREY: It sounds like so much of what you do is integrated into the culture and how you treat people, how you respect people, how you lead by example. You need those things before you can go and do some of the innovative things that you do at your organization. I'm sure you've worked at other organizations, we won't say names, where those things didn't exist and you probably couldn't have done half the things that you're doing at Spotify.
MICHAEL KIM: Exactly. Once again, those type of companies are perfectly fine, too. I think Spotify is in a very unique place where we are in hyper-growth where we wouldn't be able to survive with a more traditional model of thinking but, yeah, absolutely I think it starts with, again, the culture piece of how we want to define ourselves.
DEBRA COREY: And listening to the people so you're right. If you're not in hyper-growth, your employees might not need the same things, the business might need the same things so you need to listen from both sides.
MICHAEL KIM: Exactly. We need to be nimble and adapt, as well. A great example is our Japan office. Our Japan launched about a year ago so when you think about Spotify who's been in the business for over 11 years, we treat maybe the U.S. and European office differently from a people strategy, but Japan for us is still in startup mode. Building a people strategy around a very mature company doesn't work in Japan, so we have to be nimble enough to adjust our people strategy, but still make sure it's aligned to our North Star global goals but also allow for flexibility and autonomy to let them grow on their own. Working in that very nimble environment is very important to build that foundation of being able to do what we want to do.
DEBRA COREY: I think that's really important because in the business world they do that. I know I've been in retail and you've got different models depending on where you are in your growth, but in HR we don't always think of it that way.
MICHAEL KIM: Right, exactly.
DEBRA COREY: I think it makes sense that you do that. What type of things are you doing differently, for example, in a startup as opposed to a more established country?
MICHAEL KIM: I think it's about this notion of, and you'll hear Katarina say this a lot, in HR it should never be a plug and play, it shouldn't be a one size fits all. That's part of our greenhouse philosophy, as well. We need to localize, we need to customize for our people because people are different.
DEBRA COREY: Aligns with your products. Yeah, you create your own playlist on Spotify. See, I know, I know how to use it.
MICHAEL KIM: Exactly, there you go. But people are different, cultures are different and we need to adapt to that, not them adapt to our "corporate culture," which we don't have anyway. From there, I think, that empowers us to really go in, listen, talk to our people and build a strategy that makes sense for them there.
DEBRA COREY: That's what you said when you first stated out today. You're just joining APAC and trying to understand the whole global balance versus the local balance. You're going to be doing a lot of listening over the next couple of months.
MICHAEL KIM: That's exactly that and I think listening is such a powerful tool in HR. That's why we went to Tokyo last week with Katarina, as well. Now launching HR here in APAC, first thing we did was do a needs analysis in Tokyo. What we didn't do was go in and tell everybody what we were going to do. We listened instead and we cleared our calendars and said book time with us, we need to hear from you and we'll build our people strategy based around the needs of Japan. It was a great week out there and I think that's what more HR teams need to do is listen to the people versus listening to themselves.
DEBRA COREY: It's a good segue because I was going to end this little chat by asking you for some tips and advice. You've just given us a really good one about listening. Do you have another one or two that you could share with people that you've learned from working at Spotify.
MICHAEL KIM: I think, again, it goes back to dare to be different, dare to be bold-
DEBRA COREY: I have a T-shirt that says that.
MICHAEL KIM: Dare to challenge the norm because that's what's going to change this industry. That's what's going to move this industry forward and be fearless around that. Take risks, take challenges and if you fail, dust yourself off and get right back on the horse. I think that's the philosophy our entire team has and that helps us build the great programs that we built.
I think if you really, truly want to be innovative and collaborative and change the landscape of HR, you need to be a rebel in that sense. I think my advice to everyone is be as rebellious as possible and start questioning and having a contrarian view on things that have been done for years and years in our industry. Times are changing, generations are changing, technology is changing and we need to embrace that.
We all learn from each other, as well. Spotify HR will only get stronger and stronger if the industry keeps up and gets stronger and stronger, as well. Speaking at events like this is a great opportunity for me to learn and take away what's happening on this side of the world that we may not have back on that side of the world. For us, we're constantly learning, listening, dare to be different, be rebellious, and love what you do. I think passion and purpose goes such a long way in the output of what you put in at work. Be passionate about what you do, love what you do. If not, then you're probably not in the right job and you're not adding the most amount of value that you could be. Make sure that passion is there and that purpose is there. I think from there, really, really special things happen. Especially when you're in a room of HR leaders who all have that strong passion for HR, that creativity machine just starts going and going. That's what keeps us engaged and excited to come to work every day.
DEBRA COREY: I think you're right. We talk about the new world of HR being the new world of data. I like your term better, it's a new world of passion and the only way that we're ever going to be able to engage our workforce is to do that.
So you heard Michael. Normally, I end me saying go out and be a rebel but you've said that already, so maybe we can say it together. One, two, three, go out there and be a rebel.
MICHAEL KIM & DEBRA COREY: Go out there and be a rebel.
MICHAEL KIM: There you go.
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