How to prepare your staff for mergers and acquisitions

The ability to express thoughts, listen and connect on a personal level is required for business leaders who want to lead their teams towards shared company goals.

Effective communication is also the basis of every mergers and acquisitions (M&A), regardless of whether your company is the target of a merger, acquisition of another company or vice versa.

Many companies use acquisitions as a growth strategy. The M&A market has shown good signs of progressand technology and healthcare are at the top of the charts. Technology acquisitions account for 27 percent of the value of all deals done in 2023, and healthcare was the third-largest sector. This includes Pfizer recent acquisition Seagen, a global biotechnology company, for $43 billion.

Mergers and acquisitions can easily provoke backlash and other reactions from employees of the acquired company as well as the company initiating the merger. Employees worry about changes in their roles and responsibilities and, most importantly, about their job security.

In these times, leaders need to have an effective, transparent communication strategy. How will you discuss the reasoning behind the decision? Will you provide a clear timeline? Is the future potential of the combined entity on the agenda? Openly discussing these discussion points is key to building trust with employees. But it’s not just about passing information back and forth. It’s about creating a space where ideas can get going and employees can ask questions. It’s about making sure everyone feels heard and valued.

Create clear and concise messages

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for M&A communications. Tailoring a message that resonates with your specific audience will amplify its impact. For example, when communicating with your employees, emphasize the future capabilities of the combined company and potential career paths. When approaching investors and other stakeholders, focus on the potential financial gains, strategic justification, and creating long-term value for stakeholders.

Regardless of the situation, avoid jargon; use clear and concise language.

In business, the average message has a short lifespan butterfly flutter. That’s why it’s important to deliver clear, crisp, and compelling content before your listener becomes enraged. Here are four ways to structure your communications strategy.

1. Create purposeful messages: Explain the logic behind the merger and the benefits it will bring. Explain what the process will look like. Clearly communicate this to your employees so they understand the goals that are driving these changes. Remember, uncertainty breeds distrust.

2. Use multiple communication channels: Choose the most impactful communication methods for each audience. For internal stakeholders and employees, use emails, newsletters, in-person meetings, and Slack. Press releases, investor briefings, and social media updates work best for external audiences.

3. Be visible: This is not the time to hide from your staff. Executives should be present at all meetings and media events to reinforce their commitment to M&A success.

4. Prepare for gossip: Negative and misinformation will inevitably arise. Quickly and accurately resolve issues and questions with clear and consistent messaging to reduce confusion and create a clearer vision.

Navigating the Challenges of Mergers and Acquisitions

Merging two companies can be exciting, challenging, and rewarding. But it can also inevitably bring cultural differences. Start by assessing the two company cultures and determining how they might be similar or where there are differences. These findings will form the basis of your culture alignment plan, in which management will discuss the new direction of the company culture through a series of messages and conversations. Remember, management should model what this new culture looks like and encourage employees to actively participate in these conversations.

Although confidential information requires discretion, and confidentiality remains a critical aspect of all negotiations, it is important to ensure transparency. Leave anything that can be resolved internally to central management to avoid unnecessary uncertainty among employees.

The Art of M&A Communication

Effective communication is a continuous process that involves learning, adapting, and improving. For business leaders, clear and effective communication is one of the key ingredients that will propel a company forward. This principle holds true in all aspects of business, especially in the world of high-stakes mergers and acquisitions.