you’re doing it in a world where there’s a much greater pace of
change and less predictability in the competitive landscape.”
In some cases, transformational M&A are driven by the desire to
acquire tech and establish new, more efficient ways of doing things.
“Some businesses find they need to ‘buy’ talent and capabilities
to compete, but that may mean integrating a completely different
type of organization, with capabilities outside the acquirer’s core,”
said Lawrena Colombo, deals partner with PwC.
Most organizations include people with a mix of perspectives
and experiences. That’s good for business, but challenging for
M&A transactions.
“People of the Baby Boom generation, for example, may have a
history with a certain type of M&A,” said Fullerton. “Although, I
think it’s less about being different ages and more about having dif-ferent
histories to bring to the table.”
For an HR professional, that’s one more thing to take
into consideration.
“If you’re trying to create change management and commu-nication
strategies, you have to understand what those different
populations will bring with them, in terms of experience and ex-pectation,”
said Fullerton.
Lynn Langrock, vice president of human relations and corpo-rate
affairs with Canada Bread Company, recalls her experience,
not long ago, when her company was in the process of being ac-quired
by Grupo Bimbo.
“In our case, many of our longer-term associates had been ‘ac-quired’
before and with this came some nervousness about what it
would mean this time,” said Langrock. “It was important for us to
be able to share a story of an early discussion where senior lead-ers
from Grupo Bimbo told a group of senior leaders at Canada
Bread that they were home; they would never be acquired again
as we were now part of the biggest baking company in the world.”
ALL IN THE TIMING
With all the complexity at hand, HR needs to be in the M&A mix
as early as possible, even before the deal is made.
“According to our survey, 32 per cent of companies brought their
integration team into the M&A process during deal screening, pri-or
to due diligence,” said Colombo. “HR professionals should start
thinking about the people integration right away, beginning with
understanding cultural differences to inform integration planning.”
Most organizations will immediately think of the more transac-tional
HR responsibilities when considering a merger.
“It’s probably typical that someone from HR is brought in pret-ty
early in most M&A transactions because they need information
about pensions, benefits and cost-saving opportunities really early
in the due diligence process,” said Fullerton. “Not all M&A proj-ects
would necessarily ask the HR person to go beyond that and
start to do culture assessment, analyze any leadership gaps or start
to think about change management and communication planning.
But HR is accountable for those things. When we’re brought in,
it doesn’t matter if it’s for a pension analysis, we start to put things
on the table and listen keenly to what’s going on because every pro-cess
change, every tech change, every operating model change, we
have a role to play in making sure we can get everything done and
that we have the people to do it.”
20 ❚ JUNE 2017 ❚ HR PROFESSIONAL