Spotify’s new CHRO Anna Lundström is stepping into the role during a fairly rosy period for the streaming giant. For the first time since it was launched in 2008, the Stockholm-based company was profitable for an entire year in 2024. A few rockier periods preceded this achievement, though, including layoffs that affected 17% of the company’s workforce in 2023.
Lundström, who has been with Spotify for nine years, officially took over as CHRO in April, replacing Katarina Berg. She said her team is now focused on hiring “homegrown talent” for open roles, as well as preparing the workforce for the AI age.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What was the succession process like when you took over from your predecessor?
The good thing is that succession planning is a huge focus of ours, and has been for many years. Katarina, my predecessor, who I also reported into for nine years, was walking the talk by making me ready for the role.
Prior to this job I had probably the next largest role in the HR org, as I covered all of the business areas in Spotify, all the revenue teams…supporting our chief business officer and co-president, Alex Norström, for about three years before.
That’s a big part of our strategy, what we are actually coaching our leaders and managers to do here…you’re not doing your job if you don’t have a successor.
Any new priorities now that you’ve formally stepped into the CHRO role?
Unsurprisingly, AI is top of mind. AI has been a huge part of our product for a very long time…and now we’re very focused on embracing AI as an organization amongst the workforce.
Gustav Söderström, chief product officer and co-president, and myself, went out to the organization about a month ago and talked about the importance of AI, but with a learning lens. We’re all going to start embracing this regardless of role, offering trainings and tools.
We recently did hack week, which is usually a week where all our product and technology employees get a week [when they’re] free to work on a passion product, something they’re interested in. We went and offered that to the full organization, regardless of role, and the theme was “play with AI,” and that was very well received.
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How is your team using AI?
We are experimenting with an AI analyst that will give you real time data, such as, “what’s the current attrition rate over here? What’s the engagement score over there?”
Another one is just deck review—reviewing decks to make them ready for executive presentations, creating GPTs for that to save time…The learning angle really works for us.
You mentioned Spotify’s “work from anywhere” policy has helped the company recruit diverse talent. Has Spotify’s approach to diversity changed given some of the executive orders from the current US administration?
We did a big pivot about two years ago to focus on inclusion. That’s one big part of who we are as a company, everyone should feel like they belong and are included at the company.
We need a workforce that mirrors the world. Our product is in 184 markets, and our consumers are all over the world, so we need to have a workforce that can serve our consumers in a very real way.
Our focus on inclusion, equity, and diversity has not changed. We needed to train our managers…to be inclusive leaders and so forth. But we have not changed anything…It’s needed for our business to have a diverse workforce.
Spotify’s headcount has fluctuated over the years. How is your team thinking about hiring priorities now?
We have the last two years doubled down on homegrown talent.
We have our own internal talent marketplace built on machine learning, [called] Echo. It’s our own LinkedIn, if you will.
We have a strategy where all open jobs should first go in-house because of the belief that we need to retain our talent. What keeps people here is the challenges, the opportunities, the ability to grow, and it's been a success for us. We filled 30% of our open jobs last year internally, going up from 22% the year before.