An example of an organization that has successfully created an autonomous workplace is Spotify, the commercial music streaming service company.

Spotify switched its software development process from Scrum to Agile, with the belief that Agile principles of cross-functional teams working on full product development cycles mattered more than the Scrum practices of roles and responsibilities assigned for each part of the product development process; and accordingly, they switched their leader’s titles from Scrum Master to Agile Coach; shifting their focus from Master leader to Servant leader, creating a culture of Servant Leadership in the process.

Additionally, Spotify renamed their core organizational units from ‘teams’ to ‘Squads’ with autonomy as their driving force; they became known as ‘Autonomous Squads’. Autonomous Squads are cross-functional self-organizing teams with less than eight people, without an appointed leader; they have end-to-end responsibility on product life cycles; design, deploy, maintain, operations, and delivery; essentially all the product development parts. Each Squad has a long-term mission that they work towards, and they decide how to get there.

They switched their leader’s titles from Scrum Master to Agile Coach; shifting their focus from Master leader to Servant leader, creating a culture of Servant Leadership in the process

These Squads decide what to build, how to build it, and how to divide the tasks amongst themselves. The parameters in which the squad’s Autonomy operates includes Squad Mission, Product Strategy, and quarterly discussed short-term goals. These parameters are important for Spotify’s culture as they are used as instruments of Alignment; a concept reiterated concomitantly with Autonomy; Spotify’s culture is therefore one of high Alignment and High Autonomy, and it is widely accepted within their organizational culture that “alignment enables autonomy”.

Another concept that is advanced in the culture of the company is that of Accountability; members of squads and squads overall are held accountable for their deliverables. They do this however with the support of receiving clear expectations, transparent strategies, and long-term vision connecting to their purpose as guidance and direction in completing projects.

The office space is optimal for working teams; almost all walls are white-boards; each Squad has their own space in the office, with separate areas for working desks that are move- able, and screens that are easy to adjust to share with fellow squad members, and a separate lounge area for ‘planning sessions’; as well as a ‘huddle room’ for smaller meetings or for quiet time.

According to Spotify, Autonomous Squads has made them work faster, by making decisions happen faster locally, and their employees have become better at their work as result of experiencing higher motivation. Squads are aligned on the over-arching vision of the company, and they work towards that vision without compromising it by their independent squad goals; the catchphrase at Spotify is “be autonomous, but don’t suboptimize – be a good citizen in the Spotify ecosystem”.

It is likely that Spotify is capable of promoting both highly Identified and Integrated types of Extrinsic Motivation, as well as Intrinsic Motivation for some, as they genuinely and inherently happen to enjoy the work they do.

Spotify is a company that grew globally yet still managed to maintain its start-up feel culture, with autonomous teams and room for creativity and innovation, and empowerment—the type of environment most Millennials enjoy working within.

Squads are also exemplary of a team unit wherein Competence and Relatedness needs are secured (Self-Determination Theory). Each squad-member assumes a role and task in line with their own expertise (competence) and contributes to the functioning and achievement of of its overall Squad objectives. As each squad-member experiences the impact of the contribution towards the completion of assigned projects, they further experience enhanced squad-synergy towards a shared vision. The dynamics of working in unity towards a common goal creates a sense of belonging and identification (relatedness) amongst squad-members.

“Spotify is probably one of the best places I have worked for so far. I have high regard for the team I had the opportunity to work with. The company has an amazing work culture with a good work life balance.” Anonymous Spotify Employee on Indeed.com

Spotify’s Autonomous Squads concept may sound like the perfect work culture for Millennials, right? It shall come as no surprise then that the founder and CEO of Spotify, Daniel Ek, is a Millennial, born in 1983. Moreover, Millennials make up the larger portion of Spotify’s employee demographics, with only 14.1% of its workforce being over the age of forty.

As of early February 2023, Spotify’s net value is estimated at $23.42bn, with 8,605 full-time employees and a global user base of 456m, of which 195m are premium subscribers. Spotify is currently the leading platform for music streaming services, followed by Apple Music with 88m users.

An examination of employee feedback and reviews of the company’s culture and their experiences in working for Spotify, on websites such as Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Teamblind. com, revealed findings in support of mostly positive experiences.

The overall theme from employee feedback indicates Spotify is a company that grew globally yet still managed to maintain its start-up feel culture, with autonomous teams and room for creativity and innovation, and empowerment—the type of environment most Millennials enjoy working within. In a presentation entitled ‘Building a Strong Engineering Culture’ by Kevin Goldsmith, who was the Vice President of Engineering at Spotify between 2013 and 2016, he described Spotify’s culture with the following characteristics:

• Learn from failure
• Innovation at every level
• Iterative development
• Agile-first
• Data-driven
• Autonomous teams
• Continuous improvement
• Shared responsibility
• Transparency
• Trust
• Servant Leadership

This set and combination of characteristics is what defines Spotify’s ‘start-up’ feel culture that that is liked by Millennials. The last point openly addresses the type of leadership advanced by Spotify’s culture as that of Servant Leadership. As such, Spotify’s leadership style and focus on Autonomous teams, and innovation is one that nurtures intrinsic motivation and supports higher-integrated forms of extrinsic motivation. By way of satisfying its employees’ need for Autonomy first, as depicted in Figure 3 in the previous article, Competence and Relatedness are subsequently satisfied.

Spotify has further engrained its culture’s attributes into its ‘Agile a la Spotify Manifesto’, which has evolved into a cultural artifact as it is now printed on the walls of its offices. This manifesto serves as the company’s set of values, as explained on the Spotify Labs website. https://engineering.atspotify.com/2013/03/agile-a-la-spotify/

Spotify’s leadership style and focus on autonomous teams and innovation is one that nurtures intrinsic motivation

In an internal survey across Spotify’s offices in Stockholm, New York, Gothenburg, and San Francisco, employees were asked to rate the following statement: “I really enjoy working at Spotify! I look forward to going to work on Mondays, I have great colleagues, and it’s a great place to work”. The overall average rating in responses was 4.48/5. This rating can be considered a good indicator of overall level of satisfaction “I enjoy working at Spotify!”; and a positive indicator of motivation on both personal and group levels “I look forward to going to work on Mondays, I have great colleagues”; and an overall approval of its culture “it’s a great place to work.”

Similarly, on comparably.com, 84 % of the polled Spotify employees said “Yes” to the question of “Do you look forward to interacting with your co-workers?”. When asked “Are you typically excited about going to work each day?”, 73% said “Yes.” Spotify’s culture has managed to maintain its people at its core; this is known and felt in the way the company reiterates and reinstates its culture in the form of its artifacts and policies.

They allow and encourage new fathers to take six months paid paternal leave. This particular policy
has had the effect of generating up to 20,000 job applications per month.

For example, they allow and encourage new fathers to take six months paid paternal leave and provide for returning new parents one month of flexible work options. This particular policy has had the effect of generating up to 20,000 job applications per month.

Also, the Spotify Code of Conduct Handbook for example, stipulates all functioning requirements of an organization in alignment with capturing the essence of its culture and its flat non-hierarchical structure.

Another form of reinstating this is the focus on hiring the right talent to fit and maintain the culture. As can be found in the examination of numerous employee feedback and reviews by Spotify employees who advise those interested in applying or those who are in the process of interviewing to “show how they fit the culture”, and that they are “a team player”. One employee said “the cultural interview and fit is weighed heavily throughout the process (basically we don’t want assholes who won’t want to work as a team, regardless of engineering talent).” Feb. 24, 2018. This employee’s bold statement is demonstrative of Spotify’s strong commitment to its culture and a work environment that supports it.

According to Goldsmith, firing is also as important as hiring in order to protect the culture. He also states that when Leaders provide direction and guidance and then they get out of the way, that is what makes a good engineering culture. Reinstating Spotify’s commitment to an Autonomy supportive and empowering culture.

When Spotify employees were asked “how is the culture?” on teamblind.com, their answers included some of the following reoccurring words: “family”, “fun”, “social spirit”, “celebrating achievements”, “relaxing and fun”, “supports learning”, “autonomous”, and “sense of belonging.”

Indeed, Spotify’s HR Blog proudly states that they embody a culture that is inspired by Self Determination Theory, hence their autonomous culture; emphasis on sense of belonging and teamwork and learning and development. All of which fulfil the needs of Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence, respectively. According to Spotify’s HR Blog, this type of culture is believed to empower, support, and drive employees to achieve the mission and vision of the company while remaining motivated throughout.

Autonomy is a central pillar of Spotify’s flat non-hierarchical organizational structure.

Accordingly, Spotify has embedded it into its culture in three main actions: the autonomous ways the employees are responsible for their own and others’ learning and development; in how they get to achieve their vision and purpose (they decide how to get there, and are motivated by the freedom in finding ways of doing that); and in the individual’s personal mastery in what they do both as individual and as the company at large to grow and develop.

One employee said “the cultural interview and fit is weighed heavily throughout the process (basically we don’t want assholes who won’t want to work as a team, regardless of engineering talent).”

“Great culture to learn and grow in. You have autonomy over your career, and they emphasize on driving your own development.” Anonymous Spotify Employee on Indeed.com Spotify states that they provide the resources, tools, and support necessary for conditions of growth, development, and attaining purpose. There is no micromanagement but instead sharing direction of where the company is going, and the teams are responsible to decide for themselves how they get there.

The Learning and Development Team at Spotify is termed The Green House; they consider themselves gardeners of their greenhouse, a growth enhancing environment, that supports development of the individual and those around them; each person responsible for their own learning and they are expected to learn from each other and teach one another. Autonomy is experienced on the learning and development level.

Whilst most employees enjoy the benefits of such a culture, there are some exceptions, such as the following employee’s review on Teamblind.com, who stated “for the most part it is a cool place but does not have much structure or clear career advancement…in the beginning it seems good but the deeper in your career you go the more it starts to feel like a waste of your time and effort.”

When Joakim Snuden, former Agile Coach at Spotify (2015-2017), was asked about “what is the best thing” and “what is the most challenging thing” about working at Spotify, his answer was “Autonomy” to both questions. There remain certain challenges worth exploring when it comes to a working culture where autonomy is a central concept. However, these remain beyond the scope of this article.

Nevertheless, overall, Spotify’s Servant Leadership culture is capable of facilitating an environment that satisfies the Millennials’ psychological needs of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness, thereby leading to the creation of Identified, Integrated and Intrinsic types of motivation. Accordingly, it is anticipated that the rate of voluntary turnover would be low for Spotify. Notably during the pandemic, in early 2021, Spotify granted its employees the autonomy to ‘work from anywhere’. This policy resulted in a 15% decrease in attrition.

What can we learn from the Spotify model?

1. Autonomy supportive structures such as Servant Leadership cultures and cross – functional Autonomous Squads lead to the satisfaction of not only Autonomy, but also the psychological needs of Competence and Relatedness

The most effective work environment is one that facilitates and fulfils the psychological needs of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.

2. The more these needs are satisfied the more self-determined the behaviour for individuals feel, in this case the majority of the workforce being Millennials are experiencing higher autonomy and thus their work feels more self-determined.

3. As a result of higher levels of autonomy leading to employees feeling more self-determined in the work they carry out, they are also experiencing motivation that is more identified and integrated, as well as feeling intrinsically motivated as they inherently enjoy the work they do.

4. Keeping up with the Millennials requires a change in culture and leadership styles that nurture psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy and that also enhance intrinsic motivation in the workplace.

Implications

Organizations that are struggling to keep up with their Millennials leaving them, can benefit from evaluating the extent as to how much they are satisfying their Millennials’ psychological needs of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. Subsequently revamping cultures that fulfil these needs and as result improve behaviour that is Integrated and Identified, and ideally behaviour that brings inherent joy and satisfaction in carrying out by employees, hence achieving the ultimate level of integration and internalization, that of Intrinsic Motivation. A workforce that is operating with higher degrees of internalization of behaviour is more likely to stay with the organization than to seek alternatives and ‘job-hop’.

The most effective work environment is one that facilitates and fulfils the psychological needs of Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.

Spotify’s culture is an example of this effective combination of meeting psychological needs and enhancing Integrated and Internalized types of motivation that has contributed towards their ‘Millennial attracting’ culture. A brief search on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn of the company’s famous hashtag #lifeatspotify reveals pictures and posts demonstrative of the fun and motivationally charged spirit at Spotify, which one also cannot help but notice the pictures and posts are significantly dominated by Millennials.