Spotify presses play on employee experience hyper-personalization with new platform 'Bounce'

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Picture your music service recommending the perfect playlist as a soundtrack for an upcoming road trip. Or, as you hit shuffle, you’re prompted with a golden oldie that transports you back to the first time you heard it on the radio in your parent’s kitchen. If you’re a user of platforms like Spotify, you’ll know how satisfying, soothing, and even moving these moments of personalization can be. And, as an HR leader, you’re also no doubt familiar with the benefits of employee experience hyper-personalization alongside the challenge of being able to deliver them at scale.

Enter ‘Bounce’. Bounce is the latest of Spotify’s remarkable data-driven tools that build on the ready-made layers of its core product to offer a truly one-of-a-kind platform. It is a novel step towards a truly personalized employee experience. Spotify explains it simply: “Two people starting on the same day, no longer go through an onboarding experience, they go through their onboarding experience.”

Gary Munro, Director of HR Insights, Spotify, has played a crucial role in achieving this nexus between people analytics and the employee experience. He joins the HRD Live podcast to discuss why Bounce represents a new type of employee experience platform, what Spotify has learned about achieving delivering this level of personalization, and a host of best practices for any organization wishing to follow suit.

Bounce: From playlist optimization to employee experience hyper-personalization

Personalization has been a buzzword for several years. The benefits, in theory, are clear. But in practice, most organizations lack the technical infrastructure to execute it in practice. Munro argues Spotify has finally been able to crack the code and achieve harmony between people and personalization.

“Our view is that organizations have a real yearning for personalization. We think that’s been the missing steps,” he says. “There are other… …intranet sites or platforms that connect different technology types together. They exist, and we’re not saying any, different from that. But the personalization is generally quite a superficial level.”

The genuine layer of employee experience hyper-personalization that an existing or incoming Spotify employee will experience when using Bounce is akin to a consumer opening their app or device and seeing a host of personalized audio suggestions. Where existing platforms deliver disjointed widgets that only loosely correspond to job roles or departments, Bounce produces and customizes a platform specifically for the individual. This could include the most relevant resources or content for their onboarding experience, but in time will apply to each component of the employee experience. “It’s optimized for your tastes and what you want from the experience,” notes Munro.

Tune in to the full episode to hear Munro’s in-depth insights on the journey to creating a platform like Bounce, why we must think of people as a personalization engine rather than a decision input, and how this unique approach to personalization is already delivering outstanding value to present and future Spotifiers.

Timestamps

00:09 – Introduction

00:48 – To begin, can you share a brief overview of Bounce and why it represents a new space for EX?

05:01 – If an organization wishes to implement a similar system, what foundational elements should be in place?

07:41 – Are there any other learnings or lessons you can share about achieving employee experience hyper-personalization at this scale?

10:06 – How does this approach evolve our existing understanding and approach to people analytics?

14:07 – Could you give an example of how Bounce is already delivering great results for Spotify?

16: 57 – Do you foresee any further innovations to Bounce, or new platforms following on from Disco, Scout, and Bounce?

Gary Munro is the Director of HR Insights at Spotify and is a crucial part of the team that has built Spotify’s HR insights platforms including Scout, Disco, and Bounce.

Benjamin Broomfield As Senior Editor for HRD, Benjamin is intimately connected with HR’s foremost thought leaders and senior HR leadership from the world’s largest organizations. He produces industry-recognized commentary, Q&As, and case studies that help HR leaders to solve core challenges and increase their value to the business. Benjamin is the host and producer of the HRD Live Podcast.

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