How to Help Your Employees During a Merger or Acquisition

by Alex Schnee

When you are going through your business dealings, you might not always be thinking about your employees first and foremost. However, making the changes that come with a merger or acquisition can often affect them in a big way. It might mean totally new management, layoffs, and more—all things that can be terrifying to your workers.

Here are some ways you can make sure that you are being fair to your employees during a business merger or acquisition.

Agree to a solution

Before you sign the dotted line during your contract lifecycle management, you will want to agree with your business partners on their plans for how they are going to treat their employees, whether they are going to uphold current contracts, and more. You should have this in mind when coming up with the terms of your mergers or acquisitions, and make sure that your business partners have a plan when it comes to working with employees and finding solutions.

Create a transition period

It can take some time for your business to change hands, and you want to make sure you have set aside a calendar in order to make this happen in an efficient way that works for your employees. Depending on the size of the company, the industry you are in, and how complicated your departments are. You might want to make this transition period a few weeks or months—it can vary according to your needs as a company and how involved you want to be during the process of moving assets over. This transition period gives your employees a chance to get used to new systems and management.

Consider staying involved

You should have a good idea of what you want your exit strategy to be, as well as whether or not you are going to stay involved in the decisions the company will make. Some original owners like to be able to make choices when it comes to the overall management of the company, while others are happy to let that responsibility go. This is up to you and if you want to have a hand in where the company goes, but it will also include thinking about employees and if there will need to be changes when it comes to tasks or who is working on which projects.

Be honest with employees

A merger or acquisition can be a big change for everyone involved, and it can affect your employees in a major way. That’s why you should be straight-forward with your employees when you are about to make changes within your company. The more upfront you are about what is going on, the more likely they are to feel comfortable with the upcoming transitions.

In summary

There’s a lot at play when it comes to mergers and acquisitions, and you should keep your employees’ best interests in mind when going through the business deal. This is likely to be appreciated and help to usher in the changes to your company the right way.