The oldest Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance policy that’s yet to be claimed belongs to a 103-year-old man in Pennsylvania.
Taken out in 1928, the policy has been in force for 92 years.
“Which means someone, a parent or a grandparent, took out that policy in that insured man’s name when he was 11,” says Roger W. Crandall, MassMutual’s chairman, president and CEO.
Founded in 1851 and headquartered in Springfield since the beginning, MassMutual remains at the top of its industry now, as it was when its oldest active policy was issued. That kind of stability is a hallmark for the company, which turned an initial investment of $100,000 collected in Springfield in the mid-19th century into a 21st century company with more than $25 billion in adjusted capital.
“That $25 billion is a lot of people leaving a little bit behind,” Crandall shared during a recent meeting with reporters and editors from The Republican and MassLive.
MassMutual Chairman, President and CEO Roger Crandall speaks with reporters and editors from The Republican and MassLive Feb. 7, 2020 (Don Treeger / The Republican)
That $25 billion also represents the hard work of generations of Springfield-based workers. Work that will continue with a commitment to Springfield and to a data-science center in Amherst, where MassMutual hopes to recruit despite the challenges of a relatively small and somewhat isolated city.
MassMutual has undertaken a years-long $50 million renovation of its State Street headquarters, meant not only to update the offices to 21st century business culture but also to accommodate about 1,000 more people.
It’s a balancing act, Crandall says, between the need to attract talent only available in booming Boston and the need to attract people who cannot or won’t live in a major city yet need to be close enough to attend face-to-face meetings.
The MassMutual headquarters has 3,500 employees now and expects to hit 4,500 employees by the end of 2021 or early 2022. At the same time, the Enfield offices — where 1,500 people work today — will likely be closed by the end of 2021 as MassMutual migrates most of those jobs to Springfield.
Related: As MassMutual transitions workers to Springfield and Boston, Enfield campus remains on the market
MassMutual’s evolution is also seeing the company building a new campus at the Boston Seaport as part of its $300 million investment in the Bay State announced two years ago and growing its presence in New York City, the nation’s financial heart. MassMutual’s new building at Boston’s Fan Pier will be done in late 2021.
MassMutual has already started migrating tech-heavy jobs from Springfield and elsewhere to Boston. MassMutual has 500 workers there now and will be at 700 there by the end of this year and eventually grow to more than 1,000.
MassMutual sold Tower Square in Springfield and no longer has a presence in the building, having moved the offices of Barings, its investment management arm, out last year.
MassMutual also closed offices in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Charlotte, North Carolina, to consolidate in Springfield and Boston.
The visit with Crandall included a tour of offices within the sprawling building first opened nearly a century ago in 1927 at what was the site of the Kalmbach and Geisel brewery founded by the ancestors of Theodor Geisel, Springfield’s Dr. Seuss.
Gone are rows and rows of corporate cubicles, replaced by open concept offices where employees are expected to grab a seat at a long table, high-top bench or in a restaurant-style booth and get to work. If they need privacy, MassMutual’s built glassed-in booths for telephone calls. If they need to meet as a group to collaborate, employees can do it at table, a booth or in a conference room.
“We have places for introverts to get away,” Crandall notes. “I figure at least half the people who work here are introverts.”
This new no-set-place workplace goes for Crandall, too. His suite of executive offices — a space he admits was bigger than most apartments and more useful as a signifier of prestige than a functional workspace — is being converted into a more bullpen-style office space.
As for Crandall, he’s got his iPad and a file cabinet with business cards and supplies in the corporate headquarters. He works wherever he happens to be.
“The un-office office,” Crandall says before describing his old suite as museum-like. “I had the hall of dinosaurs.”
Not only does Crandall think not having the classic office makes him more productive, he also is happy the changes will make more room for some of those 1,000 employees.
“I can accommodate them without adding on to this building,” Crandall explains, “and I don’t want to add on to this building.”
Greg Saulmon / The Republican file
Above, MassMutual’s State Street headquarters in November 2010. Below, the building in 1950.
Courtesy of MassMutual
The idea that any CEO of a Fortune 100 company — MassMutual is number 84 — would be worried about finding enough space in his Springfield office building is great news for the city and the region, says Robert A. Nakosteen, a department chair and professor of operations and information management at the University of Massachusetts Isenberg School in Amherst.
“Springfield has suffered over the years with its manufacturing base eroding, really since the turn of the last century,” Nakosteen says. “Having MassMutual bolsters its self-image. And these things, even though they are intangible, are a really important aspect of the Western Massachusetts economy.”
Nakosteen remembers when American Bosch closed in 1986 and the devastation that caused for the city and the region. It’s just one example.
“We’ve seen a lot of headquarters move,” Nakosteen says. “It’s not just devastating to the economy. It’s devastating to the economy of the area.”
The presence of MassMutual has a halo effect for the economy, Nakosteen adds. It means Springfield is a player.
“A good example of this is how hard Boston worked to get GE even if the direct effects are not that much given an area that might have too much else going on,” he explains, “but it’s worth it to Springfield to have that name.”
John P. “Jack” Greeley is a professional educator in management at Western New England University and a Springfield native who spent many years in banking here and in health care management in the Berkshires.
He says MassMutual has always been instrumental in civic affairs, providing funding and the volunteer talent of its workers and executives. But it was once one of many companies, banks included, headquartered here that did the same thing. Think of Breck shampoo or Milton Bradley’s games operations.
“They have the ability to do really, really big things,” Greeley says. “It really is influential. In every domain, the more power you have that has an interest in Greater Springfield and Western Massachusetts, the better for the region.”
That includes politically. Witness Crandall’s advocacy for east-west rail.
Another change as MassMutual morphs is its dress code. Once a shirt-and-tie bastion of formality, the corporate dress code for the past five years has consisted of two words: “dress appropriately.”
Crandall said that means a person’s workwear should match the day’s agenda. He wore an open-collard dress shirt and jeans for the interview. A meeting with Wall Street CEOs might require a suit and tie.
"If you are coding for a new app, then a t-shirt might be appropriate," Crandall said.
Besides giving employees more responsibility, the policy also helps MassMutual compete for the tech talent it needs. That competition isn’t with other insurance companies, he said — it’s with Google, Facebook or one of 50 startups in Boston, Silicon Valley or even Tel Aviv.
The policy department at MassMutual in 1952.Courtesy of MassMutual
Nakosteen, meanwhile, says MassMutual’s hidden influence includes making it easier for all employers to recruit talent to the region. MassMutual raises the region’s status, he notes.
It also provides good professional jobs. Think of Baystate Health or UMass trying to hire professionals from outside the region or trying to keep professionals here as their careers progress. Often, those people are in a relationship and their life partner needs a professional job as well. And if that job is in the Pioneer Valley, it makes the decision to live here easier.
MassMutual can be one source of those jobs. And the reverse can be true of MassMutual’s recruiting efforts.
Nakosteen uses MassMutual to recruit students into the programs he runs at UMass, he says. Every year, students go to MassMutual for internships or to work after graduation. He makes sure that incoming students know the opportunity is there, right down the road from campus in a city where they can afford housing and won’t be trapped in Boston traffic.
Crandall cites his ability to tap into the region’s colleges and universities as one reason why it makes sense for MassMutual to keep doing business in Springfield versus moving more jobs to Boston. It’s the reason why MassMutual’s data science lab is in Amherst, close to UMass, Smith and Mount Holyoke colleges.
He acknowledges, though, that it can be a challenge to recruit talent from outside the area to Springfield, a scenario which helped drive the decision for the Boston campus. MassMutual’s run experiments, posting the same jobs twice, once for Boston and once for Springfield, he shares. The Boston posting garnered hundreds of times more applicants.
“People want to be close to a big city,” he says. “They also want to be able to buy a house.”