Spotify gave all its staff an extra week off — here’s why

This arti­cle is part of our Going Against the Grain series, which tells the sto­ries of com­pa­nies bold enough to break busi­ness norms and try out new ideas. To explore the rest of the series, head here.

The pan­dem­ic has caused one of the biggest re-eval­u­a­tions of work/life bal­ance since the intro­duc­tion of the week­end. Prince Har­ry was just the lat­est to stress the impor­tance of time off ear­li­er this month when he advised employ­ers to give their staff time to work on their inner selves to help alle­vi­ate the effects of burnout and stress.

It was this sen­ti­ment that inspired Spo­ti­fy to intro­duce a ‘well­ness week’ for its employ­ees. Tak­ing place dur­ing the first week of Novem­ber it allowed all employ­ees to take five days off as paid leave, effec­tive­ly shut­ting its offices for five days.

Spo­ti­fy chief HR offi­cer Kata­ri­na Berg tells Racon­teur that the aim of the week was to give its staff a “chance to recharge and focus on them­selves”. The com­pa­ny had been giv­ing peo­ple small reminders to look after them­selves and their well­be­ing dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, but decid­ed that hav­ing a week where every­body logs off would be “real­ly pow­er­ful”.

Staff were instruct­ed to use the time how­ev­er they wished, whether that was spend­ing time with fam­i­ly, get­ting out in nature or sim­ply relax­ing. “It was a chance to do what­ev­er brings you joy,” Berg says.

While giv­ing every­one a week off might seem like a sim­ple idea, there were logis­ti­cal chal­lenges involved. Con­tin­gency plan­ning was required to account for any busi­ness-crit­i­cal events that may have occurred, while users of its music-stream­ing plat­form were warned that playlist updates would be min­i­mal and it would take longer for sup­port to reply.

There were also some peo­ple in the busi­ness who still had to work. Mem­bers of its cri­sis man­age­ment team need­ed to be on call dur­ing the week, while some of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty team were in Glas­gow at the start of Novem­ber for the COP26 envi­ron­ment con­fer­ence. These indi­vid­u­als were offered a sep­a­rate week off lat­er in the year.

Berg admits it would have been ide­al if every­one in the com­pa­ny could have had the whole week off but believes ini­tia­tives such as this can still work even if they don’t work per­fect­ly in prac­tice

“Most of the staff that were work­ing were still able to relax because there were no emer­gen­cies,” she says. “Obvi­ous­ly it would have been great if every­body could take the same week off, but that isn’t always doable.

“That is just the nature of busi­ness for many com­pa­nies, but it shouldn’t be seen as a block­er.”

The business benefits of shared time off

Giv­ing a whole com­pa­ny a week off appears fraught with issues, par­tic­u­lar­ly if some­thing goes wrong while peo­ple are away. The eas­i­er option would have been to tack an extra five days onto every­one’s annu­al leave to use when they saw fit.

But Berg believes giv­ing every­one the same week of leave brought addi­tion­al ben­e­fits. By mak­ing it a com­pa­ny-wide pol­i­cy, it meant that staff did­n’t receive unex­pect­ed calls from peo­ple still work­ing or come back to an over­flow­ing email inbox and to-do list.

This, she sug­gests, was the best way to help those who might have suf­fered from stress or burnout due to the intense nature of work and life dur­ing a pan­dem­ic.

It also meant the well­ness week had a more pow­er­ful impact, accord­ing to Berg, who claims there was a notice­able improve­ment in moti­va­tion across the com­pa­ny fol­low­ing the shared time off.

She says: “We hoped peo­ple would be hap­py but I don’t think we antic­i­pat­ed how help­ful it would be for peo­ple to recharge, and how proud and engaged they would be when they got back.”

The suc­cess of the well­ness week and the pos­i­tive feed­back the com­pa­ny received has meant there is poten­tial for it to become a per­ma­nent ben­e­fit, although how this might work in prac­tice is still being dis­cussed inter­nal­ly.

“Judg­ing from the feed­back we got, I would­n’t be sur­prised if we have anoth­er one,” Berg says.

How to introduce your own wellness week

Berg has some words of advice for any oth­er com­pa­nies look­ing to intro­duce their own well­ness week. The first being that it should be a full week.

“Don’t just do a well­ness day,” she warns. “Because if you’re try­ing to make sure that peo­ple real­ly recharge, a day is not enough.” 

It’s also impor­tant to find a week that’s rel­a­tive­ly clear for the major­i­ty of the busi­ness and to noti­fy peo­ple well in advance of the date. For exam­ple, it’s not a good idea to enforce a week off in the build-up to an impor­tant client pitch because peo­ple will either still work or wor­ry about the work­load when they get back.

Find­ing a suit­able time was par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing at Spo­ti­fy because it has 49 offices oper­at­ing across 29 coun­tries. “For us, it made sense to have it at a time when the major­i­ty of our col­leagues were going into win­ter, when the weath­er is cold and the days are get­ting short­er,” she says, but admits this will not be the same at every com­pa­ny.

Cru­cial­ly, this needs to be a top-down ini­tia­tive. The lead­er­ship team must set the exam­ple on real­ly tak­ing the week off so that oth­ers fol­low suit.

“It starts at the top, so if the CEO par­tic­i­pates prop­er­ly by switch­ing off their email and not mak­ing calls dur­ing the week, peo­ple will under­stand they are allowed to do the same,” Berg says. “You have to role mod­el it, you can’t just say that every­body’s off while man­age­ment con­tin­ues to ping and send mes­sages.” 

Ulti­mate­ly it comes down to trust. She adds: “You don’t have to over-engi­neer it, you just have to trust your peo­ple.”

For any busi­ness look­ing to sup­port their staff after the chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances of the past two years, a well­ness week may be an effec­tive way to let every­one recharge.