Sunday 31 January 2016

Successful Workforce Mergers - The Power of Planning and Positive Engagement

This is the executive summary of a report compiled by Blacklarke in January 2016.  To receive the full report, or for more information on help on your business journey, be it a merger, acquisition, sale or change in strategy, contact benjamin@blacklarke.com

Business changes, particularly mergers, acquisitions and sales, have a huge impact on leaders and employees of an organisation. Uncertainty, tight deadlines and a clash of cultures can all combine to create an unhealthy and unproductive working environment. Yet getting to the bottom line through the financial and legal processes is still regarded as the primary objective, while ensuring sustainable success by having employees buy into the change, is often a secondary consideration.

For this report, Blacklarke HR Consulting interviewed CEOs and HR Directors of a large number of companies which have been through mergers, acquisitions or sales over the past few years. The purpose is to establish whether there are any consistent themes to maintaining employee engagement during these periods of change and to identify a set of simple principles which the leaders of organisations should follow when embarking on a change journey.

We examined a diverse range of organisations, including family businesses with under 30 employees, professional services firms, charities and multinational corporations. Whilst the circumstances of each case were clearly different, what emerged was a set of clear and straightforward principles that are needed when approaching a project of this nature, particularly when considering the morale of the people impacted by it.

We concluded that confidence in the journey was key to success and more importantly, key to maintaining morale, even during a difficult period.

This involves the three Cs:

 Certainty
  • ensuring full due diligence is completed before finalising a deal 
  • having a clear vision, goal and strategy   
  • not being afraid to leave behind those who do not support the vision 
Communication
  • ensuring the strategy is articulated and emphasised 
  • seeking feedback on the strategy from employees  
  • following up with actions to demonstrate commitment to the strategy 
Consistency
  • ensuring follow up takes place quickly 
  • ensuring follow up is in line with the articulated strategy   
  • sticking to the plans unless there is a fundamental reason to alter course, which must be justified and communicated  
Without these principles, a change programme may eventually succeed, but is likely to be a painful process with commercially detrimental legacy issues continuing to hamper progress over many subsequent years.


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