A Post-Merger Integration of Global HR Services

The Starting Point

When a large oil & gas company decided to acquire another smaller one, the company executives expected that, since they were both at one time the same company (the second company had been a divestiture 20 years earlier) the cultures and processes would be similar and easy to merge. After the initial diagnosis, it was clear that was not the case.

Significant work was needed to merge all HR processes, ranging from Benefits, to Employee Stock Purchase Plans, and Talent Management. This needed to be done for all  employees around the world, following company and local government laws for countries like US, Canada, UK, Russia, Libya, Nigeria and regions like Europe, The Middle East and Latin America.

Brought about a strong internal customer-centric and action-oriented culture to HR processes for a merged entity.

The Journey and the Results

With a core team of Senior Change Managers working with the Integration Office and the HR departments of both companies, as well as an extended team of Change Agents around the world, we were able to assess the global and local needs and create an HR merger plan that was executed over a period of twelve months. With this plan we successfully accomplished:

• Communications that reached all 50,000 employees from both companies, globally. 
• Communications created and produced in various formats, including an HR merger guidebook, newsletters, poster campaigns, videos, town hall meetings and workshops, in three languages.
• The redesign of all HR processes, including working with vendors to integrate their services into the internal HR offerings.
• Training of an extended network of trainers (train the trainer) to reach 10,000 employees to be trained in all the new HR processes and policies.
• Design and implementation of a Help Desk Service specific for the duration of the merger.