Securian Financial hosts 2,200 employees at downtown St. Paul’s Mears Park ‘Together Again’ get-together

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
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When Securian Financial invited 3,400 current and former company employees to head to downtown St. Paul for an outdoor lunch, beer and live music celebration, Brian Mayer wondered how many would actually show. To his surprise, some 2,200 workers put in their RSVP.

And, judging by the long lines for food and refreshment at Mears Park on Thursday afternoon, turn-out was right on target.

“I was shocked,” said Mayer, a group life insurance underwriter from Bloomington. “It goes to show, people do crave coming together.”

Chris Hilger, chief executive officer of Securian, downtown St. Paul’s largest private employer, joined St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, Joe Spencer, president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance and other downtown boosters for the company’s largest get-together in years, a joint effort to advertise growing confidence in a downtown that all but emptied out in the early days of the pandemic.

“It’s been a crazy couple of years,” Hilger acknowledged.

The “Together Again” celebration — featuring music from Romantica and The Sunken Lands, ax-throwing with a plastic ax, bean bag toss and other outdoor fare — aimed to showcase both the company and its environs. Securian has stopped short of requiring employees to return to the office, encouraging instead that employees head to its two Robert Street buildings about twice weekly, with wide latitude.

In letters to the mayor’s office last October, the CEOs of both Securian and Ecolab had expressed hesitation to bring remote workers back downtown at all unless the city clamped down harder on street crime. On Thursday, Hilger expressed optimism that things were moving in the right direction.

“We’re proud to be where we are,” he said. “We’ve been downtown for 142 years. More than anything else, it’s time to have some fun. We need a little more fun in this world.”

Mayer had worked at Securian’s Robert Street offices for two weeks before the pandemic thrust him and thousands of other corporate employees across the country into the strange new world of remote work. He enjoyed his time away from the office, but he didn’t realize until he began venturing back once per week how much he had been missing out on both socially and professionally.

“I’m an absorber,” said Mayer, who specializes in supplemental health, a product line where the 142-year-old company is just beginning to build its footprint. “I get to hear my manager’s conversations with other areas. I like to absorb and learn. It’s the collateral stuff that you don’t really think about, but it’s important to people like me who are trying to build their career.”

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