Acquisitions are never easy, but they’re becoming increasingly common because of their influential role in corporate strategy. Many business leaders consider buying a company for access to markets, products, technology, resources, or management talent less risky and speedier than gaining the same objectives through internal efforts.
Getting acquisitions right on the people side is critical to an organization’s success. There are many details and moving parts, but putting the key elements in place early on will set a transparent, collaborative, and inspiring tone for the journey.
1. Start with empathy.
The essential first step in bringing people together following an acquisition is understanding its impact on your workforce. There’s a lot of change, disruption, and uncertainty for employees on both sides, but especially within the acquired company. Starting with an empathic mindset and building trust is the foundation for success.
2. Consider the full employee lifecycle.
With acquisitions, HR or “people” teams should consider the full employee lifecycle from the outset. Ensure that you’re bringing together appropriate communication mechanisms, plans, programs, integration ideas, etc., that reflect the complete view of the employee experience.
To integrate folks into a unified company, you need to welcome them officially and start getting them immersed in the business—learning from each other, sharing product information, and the onboarding experience. During acquisitions, I’ve spent a lot of time crafting new hire sessions.
My approach: Let’s meet you as a business, and you meet us as a business, and let’s learn from each other. It’s about creating fluid opportunities for the two organizations to come together and get to know each other, the clients, and partners, all in a meaningful way that helps drive that “better together” spirit.
3. Start building teams.
Once people are onboarded, it’s time to start bringing teams together. There are new faces on the screen or in the conference room and new decision-makers at the table. HR needs to understand each group, its structure, and how aligns with the bigger organizational picture, then communicate that new alignment to people ASAP.
Transparency is critical. Employees want to know exactly who they’ll be working with, how the new team will work together, why this team is important within the business, and what will make them collectively successful. Establishing and then quickly communicating the go-forward strategy early on is very important.
From there, you can start weaving in teambuilding activities. This will help employees organically build personal and professional connections and working relationships, enabling the new integrated business to thrive.
4. Establish connection points.
Every company has a different feel regarding those HR connection points. New employees are probably accustomed to other practices around reviews and goal setting, how often they meet with HR, the systems and tools they use with their manager, and so on.
Employees want to understand, “How can I be successful?” “What are my goals?” “How do I fit into this integrated organization?” and “How can I make an impact?” Getting the jump on creating a supportive HR infrastructure around new employees is important because it helps people feel connected to the business.
5. Establish the right training focus.
A lot changes when companies come together. There’s typically a significant learning curve, especially if people are learning about new clients and products. Post-acquisition training and development need to be crafted around the overall business strategy. Often, it will center on understanding the effects, their value, and how they benefit clients.
Employees want to feel like they’re learning, growing, and improving. When you have new people in the mix, you have new experts and peers to learn from. The People team can help foster these organic learning opportunities where employees share ideas versus just setting up formal training facilitations. Get groups together with problems to solve, and vital learning will inherently happen.
6. Prioritize merging HR software systems.
It’s not uncommon for growing companies to keep people’s data in multiple systems, but the People team needs a single source of truth to be successful. Integrating HR systems during an acquisition is essential so the People team isn’t spending time chasing data and can focus on adding value to the business and its employees at this critical time. If you have in-house resources to handle the integration, great! Otherwise, bring in a third-party expert to ensure the integration is quick and successful.
7. Deal gracefully with “redundancies.”
Addressing redundancies within newly merged organizations without losing talent is a delicate balance. The People team needs to understand employees’ strengths, skills, and proficiencies.
I’ve been fortunate to work for organizations such as TrueCommerce that are in growing modes as they merge and acquire. We can appreciate how best to leverage employees in new capacities if we do proper diligence. Sometimes, even in an expanding business, there aren’t opportunities for every employee in the unified organization. This makes it even more important for HR to understand and work with people’s strengths—especially in today’s competitive talent market.
8. Establish a common culture.
Establishing a unified company culture is a core element in an effective acquisition. It’s crucial for individuals to feel connected and part of a broader team. Prioritize figuring out what the mission, the vision, and the values of this combined entity will be—and give employees a voice in that process. This will be the foundation for the combined company’s HR programming, communication, and engagement strategies.
Part of unifying a company culture is articulating why what we do matters. People want to connect their work to something greater than themselves that benefits society. At TrueCommerce, for example, we’re helping customers navigate those supply chain challenges that are so much in the news. If you can bring that vision of a greater purpose to life for employees, it will help create job satisfaction and support talent retention.
