POST-MERGER INTEGRATION - THE HR
PERSPECTIVE
A
s a part of the HR leadership program of one of the
Indian conglomerates, I was put up on a Post-Merger Integration
project for a Retail fashion chain they had recently acquired. Part
of my job was to go to the business and understand HR in an environment which was dynamic but chaotic. The people were new,
the systems cryptic and even the office space was borrowed. All in
all, it was a Pandora’s Box unfolding, where people were grappling
with uncertainty, confusion and deep seated anger.
There were basically three kinds of people in the organization,
Oldies- who got transferred to the new company from old company as a part of acquisition, Torchbearers - who got promoted
(supposedly) within the acquiring firm to handle the new business and Newbies - who were brought into the system to fill the
voids that were created primarily because some of the oldies
didn’t want to join the new framework. The Oldies were people
who took up the job primarily because they still wanted to give
their jobs one more shot as they believed that things might just
work under the new administration and they might not have to
alter their current lives. The Torchbearers believed that since the
system wanted them there, it was their job to define and layout
the processes the way they think was correct. The Newbies were
people who had come into the system primarily because of one
of the two reasons - Either they were very happy with the pay
28 • Designfreebies Magazine • www.designfreebies.org
they were being offered which was a strategic move on the part
of management or else they came in because of the pride it brings
to be working with one of the finest groups of the country. Either
ways, they came into the systems with a lot of hope and expectations.
The oldies were upset because everything that used to be there
was changing and asked what was wrong with the way things in
place and why are new systems being looked at. The torchbearers
were upset because they felt that management duped them by
sugar coating the new job as a challenge and logical leap to the
career. The Newbies were upset because all they could see was a
system which was still unstable, a team which still wasn’t formed
and working hours which violated the legal definition of work
timings - left, right and centre. The reason for anger of all three
set of people originated from one root cause - they came into
the system on the basis of a promise that was taking time to get
fulfilled. Each passing day was adding fuel to fire.
As I glance through the picture I have painted, it looks grim and
the reader might just anticipate an explosion in the offing. Well,
thankfully, till the time I left the place, nothing of this sort happened. On the contrary things started looking much brighter.
What happened during that course of time is what I would take
away as some of the learnings from the stint as a student of HR in
particular and student of Management as a whole.