Managing the Human Side of Change

Introduction 

When the business world is facing challenges, such as the ones that prevail during a recession, it seems like an astute move for organizations to acquire other companies cheaply while disregarding the typical prediction that numerous mergers might fail to add economic value during the initial years of operation. Whereas M&A efforts witnessed significant depression in 2008 and realized tremendous decline during early 2009, acquiring firms during the period ended up outdoing their peers in the industry in terms of market valuation. Nonetheless, outdoing peers during poor economic situations indicated that the stock prices of the acquirers declined by a small percentage, while these kinds of companies lost minimal values as opposed to others, although their worth did not increase. Having the capacity to purchase other firms revealed that their financial performance was good, which would lead their performance in the stock market to perform well. Experts argue that acquiring other firms when the economy is weak just add marginal value by reducing costs. With the strengthening of the economy, the successful unions serve as the ones that capitalized in gainful growth, which requires incorporating as well as motivating the workforce that has the capacity of working smoothly and quickly, hence reducing disruptions, raising share of the market, innovate, in line with coping with evolving developments. Thus, the paper discusses the issue of managing the human side of change via the steps in the change management process.

Identifying Losses 

Identification of losses within an organization is vital within an organization, particularly when considering the issue of mergers and acquisitions. When deciding to acquire or merge with another organization, the stable organization determines whether the other firm is realizing losses or profits. For the merger or acquisition to be successful, the acquiring company should determine whether it has the ability of absorbing the losses being realized by the other corporation and the measures that it needs to adopt to strengthen the loss making operations. The situation is apparent with the acquisition of Gillette by P&G. For P&G, some of its managers expressed concerns regarding prior employees of Gillette, especially since they perceived the employers of the company as incapable of coping with the operational requirements of P&G. To allow the conjoined organizations to perform efficiently and realize profitability, the leaders of P&G embarked on an initiative aimed at replacing the lower performers at P&G with the higher performers associated with Gillette. This served as a particularly bold move for organization previously understood to promote employees from within to learn from other talents. With this kind of endeavor, it is evident that P&G embarked on deploying strategies that would permit it to continue realizing increased profitability. It targeted the lower performing employees within the organization whom it replaced with the highest performing ones, whom it sourced from Gillette. With this kind of an endeavor, the organization would realize increased performance by leveraging on the productivity of the employees from the two conjoined organizations.

Providing Information and Asking for Feedback 

To ensure that the operations of an organization progress in a smooth manner, especially in the event of a merger and acquisition, it is essential to consider availing information as well as requesting for feedback. Organizations need to make sure that they avail relevant information concerning their operations and seek feedback when it comes to any issues related to operations of the existing organization. The case of offering information and asking for feedback prevails in the event of the acquisition of Gillette by P&G. For the acquisition, it emphasized on establishing networks for new workforce. The move did not just target making the people from Gillette to feel welcome in an abstract manner, but also for business purposes. For P&G, it directed tremendous reliance on internal stakeholders to take part a decision-making processes that revolved around a consensus. In the event of P&G, it paired the past and new workforces while availing training programs, which embarked on teaching soft skills, including ways of building relationships and networks. Thus, availing opportunities for offering information and asking questions makes it possible for the employees to learn from each other and contribute toward increased productivity of an organization. As such, creating an avenue for offering information and asking questions within an organization plays a critical role in terms of ensuring that employees used to distinct values can be able to come together and work toward a common goal in a new organization.

Marking Endings 

Marking the endings entails determining the manner in which organizations would operate together and the manner through which they would terminate their operations in the event that their merger or acquisition fails to succeed. In this vein, organizations are able to devise plans for how to undertake their operations and issues that would lead them to end their operations together. An instance of companies involved in such a step comprised of the acquisition of Saatchi & Saatchi, an organization experiencing financial challenges, by Publicis Groupe. The organization purchased new agency networks to allow it serve additional clients in various places, although Saatchi was also looking for additional avenues for realizing growth. However, the acquisition process was a challenging one mostly because the two organizations lacked adequate guidelines of managing talent. In this case, on matters relating to marking the endings, the organizations needed to consider draft means of ending their cooperation, especially in the event that their efforts to work together failed.

Managing the Transition 

Transitioning from a single organization to a conjoined organization is usually a challenging process. In this case, companies need to ensure that they devise effective means of dealing with the change process to ensure that they work together in an efficient manner while improving their overall productivity. For CEMEX, its purchase of RMC depicted an instance of adequately managed transition process. For the organization, it invested millions instantly after buying the RMC, which it used on just the air filtration system. The endeavor was not cheap, while the leaders of CEMEX felt that the initiative was the ideal thing to do. It ensured to send expert PMI (post-merger integration) teams together with maintenance and quality control experts to assist in addressing the existing problems with RMC in line with training the employees at the organization on the operations that CEMEX undertook. The experts at CEMEX worked together with those of RMC to ensure that the employees from the two sides transitioned effectively. The workforce managed to learn the ethical systems, technology platforms, and management practices, thereby contributing to increased efficacy of the organization. In this vein, it is apparent that managing the transition process in an effective manner plays an essential role in terms of allowing companies to merge their operations successfully and boost the productivity of the conjoined organization.

Conclusion 

In conclusion, when integrating diverse organizations from different countries or those in small offices to operate as one, it is crucial to look at areas that can allow their operations to emerge successful rather than act as rivals. They should act as if they are welcoming hosts as well as those eager to learn. The leaders of these companies should be accustomed to the culture and emptions, while realizing the need for communicating change to the workforce. They should also develop transparent processes for eradicating anxieties concerning whether changes would meet the requirements of the employees. Thus, when it comes to investing in the future of the employees in the event of a merger or acquisition, it is crucial to create room for establishing relationships among employees from the conjoined organizations to ensure that they contribute toward overall efficiency of the new organization.