“We are not in a rush to pull people back into the workplace,” says Rob Falzon, vice chair of Prudential Financial. With an emphasis on confronting worker stress and buoying company culture, Prudential helped its 20,000 US-based employees adapt to the pandemic by leveraging its online Skills Accelerator platform to continue professional development, increasing access to mental health care, and providing extra support for juggling remote-work obstacles. Falzon joins Heather Landy, executive editor at Quartz, to discuss data from Prudential’s “Pulse of the American Worker Survey: Work in Progress—Six Months Living the Future of Work,” conducted by Morning Consult. Based on key findings, Falzon confirms that remote work does work, and suggests that the post-pandemic working environment should be a hybrid, where office walls are torn down to promote collaboration space and there’s flexibility to do individualized work at home. Presented by Prudential.
Rob Falzon is vice chair of Prudential Financial, Inc. and a member of Prudential’s Board of Directors. As vice chair, Falzon oversees the finance, risk, investments, actuarial, communications, information & technology, and corporate social responsibility functions.
Before being named vice chair, Falzon was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Prudential Financial, Inc. Appointed to this position in March 2013, Falzon oversaw global financial management matters, including financial reporting, treasury, tax, investor relations and mergers and acquisitions.
Previously Falzon was senior vice president and treasurer of Prudential Financial, Inc., responsible for management of the company’s capital, liquidity and borrowing. Before being appointed treasurer in 2009, Falzon served as managing director of PGIM Real Estate, head of its Global Merchant Banking and Global Real Estate Securities Groups and CEO of its European business.
Prior to joining PGIM Real Estate in 1998, Falzon was a managing director in the investment banking group at Prudential Securities Incorporated in New York and was previously a managing director in PGIM’s private fixed income business.
Falzon holds an MBA in finance and accounting from Columbia University and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s degree in economics from Rutgers University. He is a CFA charterholder, a certified public accountant, and a member of AICPA and the CFA Institute.
Falzon is the chair of the advisory boards for the New Jersey Salvation Army and the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club of Ironbound in Newark. He is a member of both the Rutgers University Board of Trustees as well as the Rutgers University Foundation Board of Overseers and is chair of the Foundation’s Investment Committee.
Heather Landy is executive editor of Quartz and the editor of Quartz at Work. She joined Quartz in 2014 as global news editor, and previously was the editor in chief of American Banker Magazine. As a reporter, she covered a range of industries at publications including Bloomberg News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She was a special correspondent to the Washington Post covering Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. Heather is the winner of a Gerald Loeb Award for beat reporting and she taught journalism as an adjunct at Texas Christian University. She lives in New York.
