With your M&A transaction complete, we can support your finance and HR leaders in maintaining focus on the full spectrum of business risks and human capital challenges that will make or break success in the long term.
We will work with your team to identify the critical areas that will materially affect your business and the deal success.
At this step we can help you with:
- Capturing synergies
- Workforce integration
- Risk and governance
- Defining and measuring success
- Moving to business as usual
Capturing synergies
Achieving business synergies is high on any list of deal objectives, but poorly judged savings can do more harm than good. We can help you consider the long-term and wider impact of every decision and develop a road map that allows sufficient time for a thorough analysis of potential synergies, associated risks and implementation challenges.
In terms of risk management and insurance, your deal is likely to offer opportunities to rationalize arrangements. We will help ensure that your business is not unduly exposed in the rush for cost reductions during the delicate early stages of the new organization.
People and function synergies are also likely to be important. We will work with you to streamline internal resources and business functions so that you avoid long-lasting damage to the culture, retention, motivation and the productivity of the broader workforce.
Rationalizing insurance and other arrangements
With our significant experience and industry-specific insights, we help companies of all shapes and sizes to identify the risks facing their organization post-M&A.
We will make an initial assessment and then develop a structured plan to assess the opportunities for synergies, including analyzing existing insurance coverages and other arrangements to help identify and eliminate redundancies. Importantly, we will work with you at every step of the journey to ensure seamless integration of operational insurance and employee benefit and retirement programs.
Organizational redesign
Often an organizational redesign is needed to take full advantage of synergies and to align the business structure with the new operating model. Our organizational design services support you in leveraging these potential synergies and efficiencies.
We will use market-leading techniques to pinpoint opportunities to reduce duplication, complexity and cost, and to implement enterprise-wide HR software tools.
Total Rewards optimization
An M&A deal will typically prompt a revisit of your Total Rewards program — especially when there are changes in the company’s strategic direction.
We can work with you to build your new company’s Total Rewards strategy and underlying compensation and benefit programs to attract, engage and retain key talent from both the acquired and acquiring organization workforces.
Our Total Rewards Optimization (TRO) process draws on rigorous and sophisticated tools, supported by regional and industry-specific benchmarking data. These tools enable us to create integrated or harmonized reward portfolios that provide a strong return on investment.
Workforce integration
Building on the work completed during M&A due diligence and initial integration planning, we will work with you to assess the affected people programs and develop detailed integration plans, including priorities for Day One and beyond.
Our workforce integration services address the critical people-related areas that our research and extensive experience have found to materially affect deal success, including:
- Leadership
- Organizational design
- Talent management
- Culture
- Total Rewards
- Communication
- Change management
Developing a change management strategy aimed at cultural alignment
A thoroughly researched and comprehensive change management plan increases the likelihood of long-term deal success. We will work with you to develop a change management plan that will define and align the culture, boosting business performance and fostering long-term success.
When developing the change management plan, we will work with you to take account of the potentially different agendas of various stakeholders and help you anticipate the potential effects of a deal on employee behavior and, subsequently, on customers or clients. ;
For example, our research has found leadership to be the most important driver of employee engagement during a transaction, so it is critical to start the integration process by addressing executives’ concerns and engaging senior leaders to help ensure they understand and are aligned with the deal goals and strategy.
Cultural alignment will also depend on the deal strategy — for example, whether:
- The acquired company will be fully integrated into the buying organization
- The deal is positioned as a merger of equals
- The new company is meant to stand alone
We will work with you to develop the optimal cultural alignment strategy based on the deal value drivers and your strategic imperatives. Then, together with you, we will create a culture road map. This sets out your path for engaging leaders, managers and employees in knowing and acting on the cultural attributes, with a clear understanding of how their behaviors matter.
Harmonizing employee compensation and benefit programs
An M&A will typically prompt a review of your Total Rewards program — especially when there are changes in the company’s strategic direction. We can work with you to create your new company's Total Rewards strategy and underlying compensation and benefit programs that will attract, engage and retain key talent from both the acquired and the acquiring organization workforces.
Risk and governance
Establishing a common corporate governance framework is essential in enabling your post-M&A organization to fully understand risk and develop the necessary future oversight.
We can help you develop an effective framework with a clear plan to identify and address business risks, including operational, compliance and HR.
A holistic framework for controlling risks from Day One
We will work with you to develop an initial framework, helping ensure that any issues identified during the review process are addressed. And we can help you establish mechanisms for reporting progress.
This framework will generally cover your first 30 to 100 days, depending on the actions required. During this period and beyond, we will provide support as you negotiate, implement and manage the impact of any changes.
Understanding exposures, the total cost of risk and implementing best practices
Once a merger or acquisition has taken place, the new business may be responsible for multiple employee benefit and pension plans. We can work with you to develop an overriding framework for the governance and risk management of these arrangements.
Having this framework in place will help you to make a more complete assessment and develop a focused strategy for the new organization. It will avoid duplication of effort, reduce complexity and help identify any possible economies of scale in relation to insurance and provider costs. The due diligence process would have provided guidance and recommendations on the structure of your post-deal operational insurance program. As your advisor, we would support the implementation of this program, and ensure that insurers understand the risk profile of the new business.
By reviewing all the potential financial exposures after the deal is closed, we can work with you to shape a comprehensive governance plan that mitigates post-integration risk.
Defining and measuring success
Measuring the success of your M&A deal is essential to identify whether any further actions are required to meet your objectives — not just of the most recent transaction, but also from future M&A activity.
We can help you define what success means for you and how to measure it — both from a finance and HR perspective.
The finance perspective
The financial goals for the transaction provide a tangible measure of success. One key measure is likely to be whether the deal synergies that were expected have been realized.
If results are below expectations, there will be close scrutiny on the reasons why. Potential causes include unforeseen and under-insured risks, which is why we work with you during the pre-deal and due diligence stages to help minimize the possibility of this happening.
The HR perspective
It is essential to keep checking the mood of employees during integration so that you can sense and respond to any discontent.
Our sophisticated tools and surveys enable us to assess employee engagement and share details with senior leadership. We maintain extensive benchmarking data that enables us to measure against industry norms as well as pre-deal monitoring. Armed with this information, we can help you assess performance and make necessary.
Moving to business as usual
Our comprehensive range of support is designed to help you successfully integrate and shape your new business.We will work with your business and HR leaders to define and implement a long-term vision for a seamless journey from post-deal integration to business as usual.
Managing the reshaped business
Successful integration must be an ongoing process. It should start during due diligence and continue for the critical first 100 days post-deal. Beyond this period, it is essential to maintain a resolute focus to fully shape the new business and achieve long-term goals. We can continue to support you with interventions throughout integration. For example, by adjusting operations and controls to cater for any new developments or changing business priorities.
We can also work with you to ensure that clear, compelling communication throughout the process keeps employees informed — helping to minimize disruption and maintain customer focus.
Preparing for future deal activity
We will help ensure that your roadmap provides opportunities for business leaders to assess the deal outcome against objectives. This will help to identify possible future actions that could maximize value from the transaction.
Finally, we will work with you to help you take lessons from your deal and apply them to future transactions.
