Podcast
In this episode of Get Reworked, Jen Schettino, head of digital workplace and control at BlackRock, shares the seven year journey the company undertook to reinvent not only its physical headquarters, but its digital. The team persevered through the pandemic and other setbacks to bring the headquarters to life in 2022 — which resulted in their recognition as a Reworked Impact Award winner for innovative use of workplace technology.
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"Change management was the key to our success and really helping people to understand before they ever stepped foot in that building what they were getting, I think really helped us in the weeks and months that followed. And that has been a huge lesson for us as we think about other technologies we roll out, as we tackle other moves like this," said Jen.
Highlights of the conversation include:
- A discussion of the before and after of BlackRock's workplace.
- Why Jen credits change management for the success of the initiative.
- The employee response to the new face of BlackRock.
Table of Contents
- Tune-in Here
- Show Notes
- Show Transcript
- It Started With a Vision for a New Global Headquarters
- The Digital Tools and Physical Space to Encourage Collaboration
- Change Management to Get Employees on Board With the New Way of Work
- Post-50 Hudson Yards Launch Feedback
- Change Management Was Key to Success
Tune-in Here
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Show Notes
- Jen Schettino on LinkedIn
- About BlackRock
- Spotlight on the 2024 Reworked Impact Award Winners and Finalists
Show Transcript
Note: This conversation has been edited for clarity.
Jen Schettino: We wanted people to be able to start a meeting, a video conference meeting at their desk, take their mobile device, walk into a conference room and be able to continue that meeting in the conference room because maybe you had more people join or you just needed a quieter space. And I got to be honest, it's one of my favorite things about the environment because that has come to be and it's definitely made things a lot easier, a lot more flexible.
Siobhan Fagan: Welcome to Get Reworked, where we speak to industry pioneers who are leading the way into the future of work as we dive into the topics, trends and technologies that are reshaping not just how we work, but also why we work. I’m your host, Siobhan Fagan, editor-in-chief at Reworked, and today I’ll be speaking with Jen Schettino, head of digital workplace solutions and control at BlackRock. She spearheaded an ambitious project to modernize BlackRock's global headquarters in New York City — an endeavor that spanned seven years and transformed its digital and physical workplace, and how work at BlackRock gets done.
Jen shares the vision behind moving the entire New York team into a brand-new, cutting-edge space at Hudson Yards. We’ll hear about how they overcame major challenges, including navigating the complexities of designing an office space entirely remotely during the pandemic and managing employee expectations at a time of massive change.
Jen's experience provides valuable lessons for anyone facing large-scale transformation projects. Whether you're creating a brand new in-office working experience or simply updating your workplace technology, this conversation offers insights into how to bring people along for the ride. So, let’s bring Jen on. Welcome to the show, Jen!
Jen: Thank you. Such a pleasure to be here.
It Started With a Vision for a New Global Headquarters
Siobhan: So I have to start off with congratulations. Part of the reason why we have you here is that your team at BlackRock won one of our Reworked Impact Awards for the innovative use of workplace technology. And that's kind of why we're here today to talk about that innovative use of workplace technology that you did. So I'm just gonna jump right in.
Jen: Thank you.
Siobhan: You had a really big undertaking there at BlackRock, which was basically modernizing your digital workplace and moving your whole New York City team into one central place. Can you give us a big-picture view of the project?
Jen: Back in 2015, BlackRock made a decision that we were going to create a new global headquarters for ourselves. At that point, we were in two different buildings across multiple floors, multiple elevator banks, and really were not creating a connected environment either for our employees or for our clients. And so we wanted to select a location that would enable everyone to come together and really show off the BlackRock of the future. And so that meant not only the physical space, but the technical space. So my team was very focused on how do we create a tech environment that supports this whole fantastic experience for our clients and for our employees and makes work somewhere where we all want to be, because that's where we spend most of our time. And it was a massive undertaking. It went over a long period of time and it was not just about selecting tech, but it was about employee engagement. It was about managing expectations and then continuing to iterate and get better as we had major things thrown at us throughout the process.
Siobhan: I definitely want to talk about that change management that you did because that was a compelling part of your application. But I want to get into that timing because as you mentioned, you started this in 2015 and then it was finalized in 2022. So a couple of things happened in those intervening years, not only to BlackRock, but to the world. During those seven years, how did you roll with all of these changes that were thrown at you?
Jen: Just a little. I'm going to be honest, I was the first one who said, well, we're going through COVID. So that means we're going to pause right on moving to our new building. But that's not the way that it works in New York City real estate — we absolutely kept up.
What was interesting is where we previously were able to be together, where we were previously able to physically go to the site, all of a sudden, we're shifting to planning an in -person office experience completely remotely, which is a very unique thing to think about. even just being able to think about how things would lay out in the space, think about how people would move between different environments, all of it had to be imagined in our minds until we could start to come back to the office. So I think for all of us, that was a bit of a challenge is how do you plan a physical space completely, virtually? And so we were incredibly grateful once we were able to start to go back to the office and come back together and experience those things because it made that part of the planning a lot easier. And some of the assumptions we had made both back in 2015, 2016, before COVID had happened and through COVID, we had to change, just because you see the space and you're like, well, this isn't going to work. So how do we think about doing things slightly differently?
Siobhan: You said that you came up with this vision of showing the future of BlackRock. This sounds like it was maybe a sort of a C-suite decision to do this. Did you involve employee feedback at any point during that time, and how did that work?
Jen: We did. So there were a series of focus groups that happened at that point where we really understood from a variety of employees at every level, from every business group, what they were looking to get out of a workspace. And then we used that to help to shape some of the environment that we put together.
The Digital Tools and Physical Space to Encourage Collaboration
Siobhan: When you bring everybody together and you have everybody in this common physical space, one of the things that struck me with your application was this sense of mobility and this feeling of sort of dynamicism — is that even a word?
Jen: Sure, why not?
Siobhan: The dynamics of people just moving around constantly in motion, working and the actual technology following them from one space to another. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Jen: There was one particular use case that I think really captures that in that we wanted people to be able to start a meeting, a video conference meeting at their desk, take their mobile device, walk into a conference room and be able to continue that meeting in the conference room because maybe you had more people join or you just needed a quieter space. And I got to be honest, it's one of my favorite things about the environment because that has come to be and it's definitely made things a lot easier, a lot more flexible. And we do see the way that people live in this space is very mobile. It's very on the go. We have a lot of open space, even where there is technology and people are taking advantage of that, which is really at the end of the day what we wanted them to do.
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Siobhan: You also had something that made me crack up at the description, which was tech vending machines. Can I get one of those in my house? How does that work for your employees?
Jen: Sure, why not? Go for it!
So that is a vending machine where people can check out basically loaner laptops, if you will. Our position for most employees in the 50 Hudson Yards campus is that they are on virtual desktop. They don't necessarily all have laptops themselves, but we do know that they might run to a client meeting. They might be traveling. They might need a laptop in that moment and so that they can go and literally check out a laptop and be able to use it there. We have other facilities where they can do that as well. We have tech hubs, which are basically like Apple Genius Bars. We have two of those in the building. And if they want to actually be able to see someone while they're getting a loan or laptop or getting some other equipment, they can do that in lieu of just going up to a machine and getting it there.
Siobhan: When I listen to all this, it sounds very modern. Can you give us a sense of where you came from? What is the change in experience for employees from what was there before 2015 or at 2015 and today?
Jen: I would say even just the physical environment is incredibly different. If you can just envision a lot of cherry wood, old school, old school kind of looking desk, some cubicles, that type of thing. And then not a lot of flexibility with our technology. We were in a position where you had an assigned desk and that's where you needed to be.
And that is not necessarily the world we wanted to create. We wanted to give people the flexibility to change up where they were sitting based on a project they were working on or something else that they might be covering. Or maybe they just need a little more quiet space for that day and they wanted to go work somewhere else. So I would say we probably went from late '90s, very old school looking like financial firm to something that is much more modern, much cooler, much more open. There's lights. It's very exciting that we have lights around us, which we didn't used to have. It's just a much more open space conducive to collaboration.
Siobhan: It sounds so much though, like this is an office that's designed perfectly for the post-pandemic era. We talk about how these kind of, you you need to give people a reason to come back to the office. They need different kinds of spaces where they can work, where they can meet with each other, but also acknowledging that people have to have quiet time sometimes. Was this part of the design before the pandemic or did it kind of iterate during?
Jen: No, it was, we got very lucky. It was part of the design before. And it just happened to align with being where the world wanted to go. I will say the one interesting thing though that came up that I think was a little bit of a factor that we were dealing with after the pandemic is like everybody wanted these big open spaces. And then we go from a cubicle where you have lockers around you to open desks, which if we're concerned about people being sick nearby or that type of thing, that was actually something that we did debate a little bit. We wouldn't have changed it, but it definitely gave us a little bit of a pause in how people were thinking about those things. And we did have a couple of that weren't as thrilled with that, but we kind of merged that post-pandemic.
Change Management to Get Employees on Board With the New Way of Work
Siobhan: I definitely want to dive into the change management aspect of this, because as you were just pointing out, this was a very dramatic, not only physical change, but change on many levels of how people work. How did that change management work? Did you start prepping people in 2015 when it was first decided or ...?
Jen: We absolutely started talking to people from the very beginning and brought them along on the journey as to what was going on. As we got closer, probably in the year leading up to the move-in, our updates became much more frequent and became much more tangible — e.g. "This is what you are physically going to expect in this space." We knew not only we were dealing with moving people to a new location, but we're also bringing people back to the office after being home. And as we all know, return to office is a big thing and trying to get people to come back no matter what we were going to provide them with was a bit of a challenge.
So we tried to not only get people excited about the environment, but to do it in fun and creative ways and to get them thinking about it just slightly differently. We hosted a series of cocktail parties with some key stakeholders across the organization that included our trading function. We work in finance. Our traders are incredibly important to us. All of our admin support teams, we did a special cocktail hour for them and something for our COOs and business managers. So basically these key stakeholders across the firm, these key influencers who could help us to drive excitement across the board. And we physically set up a desk, we set up the actual desk for people to see what their tech was going to look like. I'm a big believer in show and tell. And I think like if we allow people to put their hands on it, they get a feel for it. If we get given the opportunity to even give us some feedback and tell us what they think, at the very least, if I can't change it, I can know how to talk to you about it differently and be able to address those concerns. So those cocktail parties were a great piece for us and just quite honestly a tip of the iceberg as we started to think about the overall change management.
Siobhan: So one of the initiatives that you did was the Hudson Yard Ambassadors. Am I getting that right? Talk a little bit about that initiative and tell me, do you still have those people in place doing other?
Jen: Sure. So that is representation from every business line who basically became the people who would become the champions for these move-ins, as well as people to give us direct feedback as we're going through the process. We can't talk to all 4,000 people at once, but it was helpful for us to be able to speak directly to an individual or a few individuals representing each of their businesses. And they became part of the groups that we would go out to and say, like, hey, come experience the desk, come see what we're gonna do for this and let us know what you think.
We don't still have the Hudson Yard Ambassadors. However, we use that as a model as we roll out other change. So for example, I rolled out a new intranet last year and we set up a similar ambassador type program around that change in order for us to get people to amplify and provide us feedback and get people excited about that within our business. So it's become a great model that we've been able to continue using.
Post-50 Hudson Yards Launch Feedback
Siobhan: When people were fully back in the office, it's now been, has it been fully two years?
Jen: It's probably been about a year and a half at this point.
Siobhan: Have there been any uses of the workspace that you didn't anticipate that you've seen sort of emerge during that time or any kind of responses that you didn't expect from this?
Jen: I would say that people, for the most part, are using the spaces the way that we wanted them to use them. However, there were some spaces that we created that perhaps just didn't wind up being used practically the same way that we wanted, just I think because of the way that people move in or laid out.
So for example, people actually prefer to go to the cafeteria to have an ad hoc meeting versus some of the soft seating that we have laid out on their floor, which is completely fine. I think people just want to be able to get away from their desk and change things up. And we're keeping an eye on it. That might evolve as time goes on. People might shift back. But that's probably been the most interesting thing for us is there's just been some of the some of the spaces that we envision people like, let's just crash and have a quick meeting. We don't necessarily always see that.
Siobhan: Do you have a method of gathering ongoing employee feedback?
Jen: We do employee opinion surveys that we collect that information. And we also periodically run location specific surveys around the workplace. So I think we're giving a little bit of time for people to be completely settled in here to really provide like some lived in feedback. We certainly collected feedback right during the move, but we need them to really experience it and then come back to us.
And we take all of that and use that to help us think about how we're going to change and evolve.
Siobhan: It might be too early for you to actually feel this or get a sense, but would you say this dramatic change has changed the culture in the New York office at all, or have you seen any sort of beneficial side effects from it?
Jen: I think that honestly, we were in a position prior to moving that it wasn't a space people wanted to spend time in. They either wanted to leave right away or if they were going to grab a coffee or something they would get far away as they possibly could. Now we've given them opportunities to be able to find new locations within the building and do that to still staying connected to the building, maybe giving them the opportunity to connect up. We're also seeing just a lot more opportunities for community type events on premise. So for example, we just had a cornhole tournament last week, which someone on my team, two people on my team came in third place, so very exciting. But honestly, we couldn't do that before. And we had a great turnout and it was a really huge team building type thing. And just to have the opportunity for people to come together and have fun, I that's incredibly important too, other than just like, let's have meetings and talk about the work. Let's also just get to know each other as people.
Change Management Was Key to Success
Siobhan: Is there anything that I didn't ask about that you want to share with the audience about this initiative? I mean, it's an enormous thing. It's a seven year initiative and we've just been chatting for about 20 minutes. So tell me.
Jen: My only advice to other people would be for me, change management was the key to our success and really helping people to understand before they ever stepped foot in that building what they were getting, I think really helped us in the weeks and months that followed. And that has been a huge lesson for us as we think about other technologies we roll out, as we tackle other moves like this — although this is probably the biggest we'll face — we're using it in smaller moves. But I really encourage people to think about how to connect with your employees and bring them along on the journey, because I think that really was the key to our success. And then the other thing I would say is, this is a New York project, digital workplace team globally is 500 people, and every single person within our org was involved. This was not just a New York project. We had deep involvement across the board globally. And it was really cool to see how everybody came together to deliver.
Siobhan: That's fantastic. And then I know that there are plans to potentially, as you said, not at the same scale, but potentially be doing a similar thing in some of your other offices worldwide. So this will be a model.
Jen: Whether that's the move or if it's just updating our spaces, I think we learned a lot around how to talk to employees around big, large scale changes like this, which has been really cool. And if not, honestly, like I think they will also learn from some of the things that our lessons learned that we have, things we would have done differently. So they will hopefully have bigger and better for themselves in these new locations as they're coming up.
Siobhan: I want to thank you again, Jen, for taking the time. Congratulations once again on your award!
Jen: Thank you.
Siobhan: Have you done exceptional work in the digital employee experience? Our applications for the 2025 Impact Awards are open now! You can find them at: Reworked dot co backslash reworked dash impact dash awards.
The best way to stay in the loop on the Impact Awards and all things EX and Digital Workplace is to sign up for the Reworked newsletter at reworked.co.
