Mergers

Mergers

Brian Lynn Bentley

Colorado Technical University

"The biggest thing it does is it hinders morale," Sprouse says. "When that happens, there's a tendency to hinder relationships with clients, vendors and that sort of thing." says Tim Donnely of INC.com

Mergers of large companies and small companies have the same concerns. It is a new event. It is what some pyscholgists call a stresser. And it can effect the morale of the whole company as well as the bottom line. Not to mention the mixing of potentially two different coporate cultures.A good example of this would be the movie GUNG HO, about this guy who wanted to save his town by saving the auto plant so he got a japanese company to buy it, and Ensued comedy and a great obvservation of Corporate culture class and ethnic culture class.Even though it may bea comedy it is the perfect example of what this paper is talking about. So the management and big pitcure of the deal may be going well. the management really needs to think about the lower staff. To make the money part of these deal go smoothly even right down to human resources. Becuase they will be too busy to worry about general employees. The ideas that will be going through peoples heads during a big change up of a merger will be things like this "Will i have a job?", "If i have a job will the bennifits be the same or will they be better or worse?" and of course the most important to most of us is "how much will i be paid?"

Give your employees enough leeway time to adjust and start looking for another job. Choose a transistion team that will help with job placement interviewiing skills even retraining. but they have to have people skills. alot of corporations say they are family here is the perfect time to show that you are very concerned about the members of the corporate family. Provide resources for job transistion help them find that next job. with Career counseling,reseme services even classes or even pay for some classes. Who knows they may even get hired back simply by updating the skill set.

Communitcate alot honestly and about everything and make sure the information is 100% accurate people want the truth even if they do not like what the truth is. Keep every one in the loops from management to the janitors.Make sure you reassure the ones that are staying even if there are no changes and no problems during the merger.There can and will be morall problems all the way down the line with new changes the best thing to do is be prepared for them.

A large company buying a smaller company just to elimate the compittion or shut the company down. No one likes being eaten by a shark. Sharks got a repution for a reason and this applies to some big and mega huge corporations too. If yout company has a reputation for eating up little fish making them disapear, no amount of finesse or smoothing order will enough outside keeping them on and giving them a big check. In alot of companies there is loyalty and pride working for some of these companies, some companies are even status symbols in the community they are located in.These corporations need to hire a PR team and a Transistion team with the best people skills possible. There is a saying. If you have a product no one says anything if your product is bad every one will know. So the company may have to invest in some Public relations and Reputation restoration.

I remembered a merger during a time i worked for a fast food company, the companies were virtually identical in every way aside from the title, they even both origited in the same area. However other then the outside apearence of the corporations they had different rules and different management strategies. I do not beleive any one got fired but they did do alot of the employee and staff switch. Moving good managers to different locations. Which is one of the bad moves you can do becuase in order to be a good manager you have to have a rapport with the employees and management. It is a better idea for this manager to teach other managers how to be better as opposed to moving this guy and starting all over again now instead of one manager you have two to retrain. Just keep whats working the same and use that as the model for others to make them work better.

No one really likes change especially if you are set in your ways and trying to adopt to a new method or people.That can put a very large stress load on an individual.Just let every one know whats going on every step of the proccess and give them enough advance time to adjust. 6 to12 months seems perfect.

If my freinds and fellow employees started resisting the change, i probaly would wait to see what happens first before i make up my mind one way or the other. I am just the more wait and see type, there may be opportunities that I would miss out on. My rational is i just do not jump to conclusions with nvestigating first or finding out the whole story.