HR Integration Strategy – Remote Workers
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With the recent expansion of remote workers and fewer in office workers at many companies, what adjustments should we be thinking about for HR integration strategies?
The existing systems must be understood on how company culture is maintained, how performance measures are handled regarding hybrid and remote workforce. It has to be also determined whether the acuquiring parent company is willing to leave the remote sitaution as is or whether the parent company would aim to make signficant adjustments. If signifcant changes are planned, those would have to be evaluated prior to closing and determine the impact on retention and talent acquisition. If the remote worker ratio is not planned to be adjusted, the new performance measures and company culture must be provided through extensive training and communication. Parent company must coordinate this effortth thorugh the invovelment and empowering of local management team.
From my point of view there should be more focus on the following topics:
– Self-Service and workflow to fully digitalize all paper-based processes
– Remote HCM WorkshopsYou should host a monthly town-hall to update the teams on all the updates surrounding the integration activities and allow them to ask questions. Next you should share your company’s remote worker policies and procedures (if you have them – which I recommend) and assign a HR business partner to each person or group to make sure they are all in compliance. Your IT team will need to make sure that all security measures are in place for them to work securely and safely. Lastly, a survey should be sent out to solicit feedback anonymously about their employee experience.
It should be clearly defined whether under the new merged structure the remote wokrforce can still remain as is or whether it needs adjustment. If it is a full integration and one of the merging enities have varied remote worker policies and practices, it can create disalingment in the organization. Once the policies are aligned or the current structure does not require adjustment, there should be speicifc integratio phase meetings with the remote workers involving them with the same intesity as those who are working in the offices. Special workshops, “town meetings” should be held discussing corporate values allowing remote works to feel engaged and to air out concerns.
In a recent acquisition I was a part of, the target company had a strong work form home policy with the option team members in larger cities to leverage WeWork spaces. This was primarily in cities that had many employees. The acquiring company has many offices globally. There were many questions from the newly acquired team members about whether they would be expected to stop working from home and go into the offices. In this situation, the merger did not lead to a full acquisition. The decision was made to promote the existing offices of the acquirer and make access available to local employees of the target company, with clear and well communication expectations that these offices were optional to use. Now, over time as more integration perhaps takes place, I would expect this WFH policy to potentially be reviewed, especially if there are questions about productivity.
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