I’m not sure if these are necessarily best practices, but these are what my organization has done for the last three M&A I have been involved with as well as our own internal HR Transformation to an extent.
– From the readings, videos, and discussion posts, it seems the quicker you can integrate people the better as there is less confusion around reporting structure, tools, and what organization they are representing.
– We did an activity assessment to see how much HR work was being done in the various locations because we transitioned them from a decentralized to a centralized model and needed to account for the appropriate number of FTEs we would be centralizing.
– We had them “express interest” in what centralized roles they would like to try to obtain if interested. Some people didn’t work fully in HR and were also part of operations, so many didn’t apply for a full time HR position. We did a workaround so they could do everything through their normal system and it didn’t seem like they were applying for the new job, but it caused a lot of issues with tracking, reporting, and transitioning them into their new roles that we will likely have them apply through our normal system in future M&A.
– We only offered them one position, even if they applied for multiple. The leaders who wanted to hire them discussed and picked what would be the best fit for the candidate, keeping the candidate’s preference for roles in mind as well.
– Many communications occurred around what it meant to centralize the HR roles, who would now be responsible for what in the various locations, and what the future would look like with the new roles.
– Centralization occurred as a soft-transition for some, while other groups it was a clean cut from their old role to their new role.
The planning for this started in April, Announcement end of June of what was going to happen, July – Sept. was application/selection/communication, Nov. was transition start, and January 1 of the next year was the official transition into their new titles, pay, etc.
We have the lessons learned for this whole process later today, so I am interested to see what others thought!
