Mergers and acquisitions stir the blood, triggering unconcealed excitement in numerous lawyers, financiers, executives and the media. Another core group has a different reaction to M&A: the employees of newly unified companies whose emotions typically span skepticism to loathing.
A strong employee communications program addresses these sentiments and constructively channels the power of the workforce, from the C-suite down, by prompting dialogue, squashing rumors and setting direction.
The following are basic guidelines for an M&A employee communications program, to be developed during the negotiation and transaction period, not after the ink has dried.
â–¶ Confirm executive ownership: A senior executive must own the communications program, championing its purpose, marshalling resources and tracking results. A CEO is ideal for this assignment, but if time constraints make this untenable, then an exec with responsibilities encompassing multiple departments/business units is required.
Leaders from communications, HR, training and other key departments must consult with the supervising exec regarding methods, pitfalls and goals. Without this high-level ownership, the M&A communications program will lack authority.
â–¶ Build the team: The M&A communications team itself will be among the joint venture’s earliest cooperative efforts. The team should comprise representatives from communications and HR, along with departments that will have immediate and complex interactions with the combined workforce, such as IT and training. The team should be big enough to identify a broad range of communication issues and have the means to implement tactics without becoming an unwieldy committee.
â–¶ Take the marketer’s point of view: When creating the M&A communications plan, think like a marketer and identify products, audiences and communication platforms. Products are the issues that call for a designated employee action. Audiences are segments of the joint workforce categorized by specialty, division, geographic location, pay grade and/or “point of origin” (the pre-M&A employer). Platforms are the means of outreach deemed effective and appropriate for each audience and topic (see sidebar).
Your M&A communications plan should be laid out in a chart; the document will end up looking like a hybrid of a strategic overview, a crisis communications handbook and a traffic sheet for marketing deliverables. The chart should have the following entries in a columned format:
• Issue: A topic that must be addressed through communications, from the monumental (company founder resignation) to the mundane (how to get new parking passes).
• Audience: The people who need this communication. Audiences can be broad, narrow or multiple.
• Desired outcome: What the company seeks from the audience in terms of perceptions, immediate actions, long-term actions or all of the above.
• Concerns: What could go wrong if the issue is not properly communicated and/or the audience does not take the desired action.
• Message: Information and tone to be conveyed.
• Communications: The actual piece or program—e-blast, Web page, town hall, podcast, flyer, poster, etc.
• Participants: Those executing the communication. Beyond writers and designers, participants can include people providing facts, figures, photos and other input.
• Schedule: Hard dates for initial drafts, second rounds, executive/legal sign-offs and final releases. PRN
CONTACT:
Jason Karpf is a PR/marketing consultant. He received an Award of Excellence from the PRSA’s L.A. chapter for co-managing media relations for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office during the 2004-2005 Michael Jackson criminal trial. He can be reached at www.jasonkarpf.com.www.jasonkarpf.com.