Financial Services
Ernst & Young’s Expanding Seattle Workforce Prompts Move to Larger Downtown Digs
By Bill Conroy November 19, 2019
The accounting and advisory-services firm will house some 650 professionals across three floors at its new Madison Centre office
Continued growth in the Seattle area has prompted accounting and professional-services firm Ernst & Young LLP (EY) to relocated to a 57,300-square-foot space in the Madison Centre at 930 Fifth Ave. in downtown Seattle after leasing space at the nearby 47-story Wells Fargo Center on Third Avenue for three decades.
EY’s Seattle office has experience 82% growth in employment over the past five years, the company says, and today employs some 650 professionals in the city ― with 70% of them being millennials (ages 23 to 38). Part of that employment growth was spurred by the 2016 acquisition of Society Consulting in Bellevue. That location has been combined with the new Madison Centre office, which is spread across three floors in the building and includes hundreds of modern workstations and meeting rooms as well as a growth and innovation center called wavespace.
The new Seattle office is part of an initiative called EY@Work, which is a companywide effort to provide energizing and efficient work environments.
“We’ve grown considerably over the last five years and we recognized the opportunity to meet the changing needs and working styles of our multigenerational workforce,” says Tim Tasker, EY Seattle’s office managing partner. “EY@Work enables us to be ready for the future as EY grows, to provide exceptional service to our clients and attract and retain the best talent.”
The new office space includes 244 total tech-enhanced workspaces, 33 collaboration rooms, 19 meeting rooms, four multipurpose centers, a training facility and 150 sit-to-stand workstations ― for a total of 670 seats. The Seattle office is among a number of EY’s West Coast offices ― along with Los Angeles, San Diego and Salt Lake City ― to transition to the EY@Work model, which has been adopted by hundreds of EY locations worldwide.
“The new space provides energizing, efficient workspaces and flexibility supported by current technology that enables our people to work fluidly both in and out of the office,” EY said in announcing the move today to Madison Centre from its 32,000-square-foot space in the Wells Fargo Center. “Also, on any given day, many of our Seattle employees are working remotely across the world, at client sites or other EY locations.”