It’s been interesting seeing what other people and organizations have been doing for this. Our process for my most recent M&A was different than most. We had the HR leadership identify the FTE count to be able to support the combined organization using the centralized structure already in place and an activity assessment from the organization we acquired because we didn’t know how many people were actually doing HR work in the field locations. After that was identified, the individuals who wanted to could apply for a role, interview, and all selections were announced at the same time frame. Due to our agreement, we weren’t allowed to have any organizational structure discussions prior to close, so all of this occurred (for HR) between July – September with people transitioning into their new roles in November, new pay/title/structure in January. As part of the financial goals of the merger, an FTE savings was expected – so we did have to keep that in mind.
Some of the other M&A activity I have been involved with was similar to Corynne’s comment above, but those were smaller acquisitions and there wasn’t really any overlap in roles and there was no FTE reduction expectation.
