Good employees are gems of the company. During the merger or acquisition of a company the biggest loss a company faces is its best employees leaving out the jobs. It’s very critical time for any company to save its gems and don’t let them go.
Despite of the fact that merger’s look interactive and investment to grow in the theory but practically it look very difficult for employees to understand and cope up with it. They treat it as a threat to their job. This shuffle makes them insecure. This change makes company unstable and its employees insecure about the company.
So it becomes important for the company to retain the valuable employees so that their resignation does not bring loss to the company.
Fears of Employee During Company Merger:
Some of the basic insecurities in the mind of employees during merger are:
1. Uncertainty about companies future
2. Change in company’s environment
3. Coping up with new working condition
4. Change in Policies
5. Change in rules and regulations
6. Realization of increasing work load and responsibilities
7. Complications due to communication gap in company
It’s a big challenge for an organization to proactively work on its employees, check out their potentials and retain the employees who are really important to company. There are many effective steps company can take to face this challenge.
What all you need to understand for this? Here are some effective ways to handle merger or acquistion pressure and retain their best talent.
Ways to Retain Employees After a Merger or Acquisition:
1. Finance cannot always be attractive:
Monetary incentives works wonders with employees. A good bonus pay for good work or monthly salary increase in merger or giving out compensation for the problem they are facing would definitely make them trust you and stay in the company.
Providing retention money to the employees would help them to think about their decision again. Although it does not guarantee their back, as after this too employees can look for better opportunities in the market. These incentives just act as first step or you can say a bridge to bring their trust back. So you cannot rely only on this, you need to work more to let your gems with you.
2. Why is he important:
While employee retention it’s important to understand that why you want to retain this person and for how long? You need to be very clear about the potentials of your employees and what you need before retaining talents.
3. Go according to the need:
Find the people for the positions that are needed. Usually the focus goes on with the higher positions and other positions get unrecognized. It’s important to look for more important areas and persons around in the office that really are the backbone of the organization.
A technical employee or sales man could be more important than the manager itself. So while planning employee retention strategies in the company check out achievers in other places.
4. Be thoughtful:
Don’t assume that you know how it feels to be an employee of merging company. Try to be thoughtful about creating a faith in the employees so that it gives out a positive impact of merge. It’s important that employees are satisfied with company in any way during merger of the company.
So, it’s important that you think about various methods to maintain the same environment around the company and pay retention bonus and their compensation.
5. Be credible Leader:
Credibility increases a trust bond between employee and the company and lesser the insecurities in the hearts of the employee’s.
A credible leader who tells the truth to the employee lets them face the truth and keep a faith in the company. This could be in any form of communication oral or written messages from management which speaks the truth about the merge would reduce the threat in employee to a great down rate.
6. Share your vision:
The biggest insecurity in employees is that they doubt the future of the company after the merge. They don’t want to sail a boat with a hole. So you must have a clear vision about your goals, your plans for future and do discuss them with your employees.
Sharing your plans would help them to be clear about your vision and also create a bond of trust between you and the employees.
7. Clear out you expectations:
Telling employees what you expect from them beforehand would help them to decide what they want to do.
Telling expectations doesn’t mean that you put out heavy load of work on them, it just means describing the policies and the work type you want them to do. So that they are ready to handle their work and do it more efficiently.
8. Help them out:
Communication works amazingly in any situation. Talking with the employees, understanding them, listening to their issues would help to maintain a peaceful environment after a merge.
Its important that you help them whenever they need you because your generosity would only make them believe in you and be in the company.
9. Provide with complete information:
Provide the complete information about the merge and its related changes to the employees. Employees are the roots of any organization. They have the right to know about everything going in the organization.
So its the duty of management committee to communicate with employees and disclose every crucial information about the merge with them and move forward along with them.
10. Check out workloads:
Being a manager it’s important to check that any employee is not getting higher of work load.
Merger’s usually come with lots of work creating fury in the organization but it’s important that the manager maintains it, sort it out and make work easily done by the employees when they are still thinking about their future decision.
11. Internal training and development:
It’s usually seen that during merger between the companies, organization stops the ongoing training and development trainings of the employees to save cost and time but that is a mistake they do.
The professional development training being provided to the employees is enhancing the work skills which would directly improve their work performance. This training would also build in morale encouragement in employees and also make them more positive about the work. It would save you from new recruitments and show case that the company thinks about its employees and their development making a bridge of trust and faith.
12. Performance check:
Managers should not forget to check the performance of every employee on monthly or weekly basis to check if they are proving their best, their behavior and capability to compete.
Its important to monitor the talent in employees, keep a record of the ongoing best and the areas that need help so that you can make out best team. This would also help during employee retention plan at merger of the company so that you don’t lose your gems.
Performance check would let you recognize the essential employees of the company which are really important to be there in the organization.
13. Motivate, Motivate, Motivate:
Encouragement is the juicy fruit which would just refresh the employees in the tough situation. Being a manager it’s your duty that you motivate the employees encourage them and make them believe in the best.
You need to make them believe in themselves and work for the organization even in the merge because organization will help them in every way. Motivation works internally and let employees improve their work so that they can get recognition in the organization.
14. Stay on Agreements:
Retention agreements give a surety to the employees and the organization during this essential step. It helps employees to be clear about their job after retaining employees and what all they be getting in merge.
This would also make you clear about the share you are giving out to the employee and what all is left with you to maintain the finance of the company and maintain a legal contract retention with the employee.
Conclusion:
Employee retention policy during merger or acquisition is the major responsibility and tough situation for the organization. Employees being the major part of any organization, who help the company to reach at this success needs to be cared during this big change.
Retention goes on with high level of organizational motivation which is very essential. Motivating them through monetary or non-monetary types of incentives, that is, money or promotion or other facilities would give them reason to remain in the organization. This would actually work to let your valuable employees in the organization and also lessen the recruitment in the organization maintaining stability in the root area of the organization.
So it’s all upon the managers and the higher committee to take responsibility of retention and motivation of the employees so that the organization work in with the support of the employees and employees get the support of the organization.
