Giant Williamson County employer moving dozens of jobs

By   – Reporter, Nashville Business Journal
 Updated 

One of the largest private employers in Williamson County is cutting dozens of jobs locally as the company shifts its operations.

Jackson National Life Insurance Co. is permanently laying off 64 employees at its Franklin operations, according to a WARN notice filed on June 21 with the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development. The notice says the layoffs are happening in three rounds with the first occurring on June 15. Additional layoffs are slated for July 6 and Aug. 3.

These operations-related positions in Williamson County will be relocated to the company’s headquarters in Lansing, Mich., according to Patrick Rich, a company spokesman. Rich said Jackson National decided to move the jobs to Lansing to create additional space at its Williamson County offices for 200 employees it is relocating from its Denver office, which is closing this year.

“Out of the 64 jobs being moved to Lansing, the company is doing everything we can to help place those affected employees in new jobs, including hosting a recent internal job fair,” Rich said in an email late Friday afternoon. “We have already found new positions elsewhere in the company for roughly a third of those employees.”

Jackson National has been considered one of the region’s fastest-growing companies. In February, Jackson National — which is a unit of British-based insurance giant Prudential plc (NYSE: PUK) — announced plans to add 200 jobslocally, growing its Franklin headcount by 40 percent this year. Most of those jobs are positions moving from the company’s Denver office, which had about 450 employees, according to the Denver Business Journal.

The shift is designed to make Cool Springs the new national base for Jackson National’s “distribution” business — its stable of licensed consultants who assist the outside financial advisers who are shopping Jackson National retirement annuities to their clients.

Around the time of that jobs announcement, the Nashville Business Journalreported Jackson National had paid $42.5 million for its five-story office building in Franklin’s Cool Springs commercial hub.

At the time, CEO Barry Stowe, who is based in Franklin, told the NBJ, “We see nothing but upside here. … If you’re committed to a community and you know you’re going to be there for a long time, it just makes sense to own your own real estate.”

Jackson National announced its Greater Nashville arrival in 2010, pledging up to 750 jobs at its Franklin operations. As of mid-2017, the company employed almost 500 people, ranking it among the 25 largest employers in Williamson County. In earlier interviews, Stowe heralded the company’s Cool Springs office as “an unimaginable success.”