Keeping culture intact during and after an acquisition

There are many times in the corporate comms remit when culture manifests as something more than just words on a wall or a sizzle reel that lives on your career page.

Moments of change are a stress test for your corporate culture, when the promises your organization makes to its employees are either tangible or still aspirational.

While all change scenarios are aided by strong culture comms, mergers and acquisitions stand out for their scale and scope. Bringing together an entirely new workforce requires dealing with ambiguity, platforming the right leaders who are willing to be vulnerable, and getting creative with your omnichannel messaging to reach everyone.

But it’s hard to be transparent when you don’t have all the answers during an M&A — information about layoffs or reorgs can change as decisions about the future of your combined business is solidified. In these moments, collaboration can help minimize disruption.

“If everyone is on board with the process of adapting to a new or modified work culture versus it coming from the leadership, there will be more opportunities to learn and adjust,” said Steph Lund, CEO of M&C Saatchi Sports & Entertainment North America. “Having employees, whether they’re new as part of the process or not, as part of that change is an important part of a successful transition.”

Pinion rethinks culture from the ground up after an acquisition

When food and agriculture accounting firm Pinion combined with another large firm in January 2023, Internal Communications and Events Director Debra Helwig had to rethink what she assumed about culture from the ground up.

“Don’t assume you know what the culture is like at the organization you’re bringing onboard,” Helwig said. “When they hand an M&A comms opportunity to you, you don’t know what that company’s internal communications was like before.”

While some smaller organizations don’t have dedicated internal comms functions, assuming you’re going to introduce them to the discipline of internal comms is foolhardy. Every organization is doing it in some form, even if by other name.

“You’ve got grapevines, you’ve got influencers and you’ve got information traveling in that organization,” Helwig said. “You better get in there and figure out how that’s working.”

This may mean an audit at a larger organization, or simply conversations at a smaller organization. Helwig shared key lessons learned during this acquisition:

Talk to key administrative personnel

In addition to having robust conversations with leaders and their marketing teams, Helwig’s team also talked to key administrative professionals at the organization they were acquiring.

“A lot of people only talk to that leadership layer, and they don’t get an accurate picture of what the organization is really like or how people really work,” she said. “Talk to the administrative people, because they are the ones that actually know how the work gets done.”

She added that administrative people will tell you how the managers work, whether the managers have an accurate perspective on the business or not, which gives you a lay of the land.

Repurpose your existing tech to foster tangible recognition

Using an events management tool called Conferences i/o that’s specific to the accounting industry, Helwig’s team set up a question bank that let incoming and current employees ask questions and see answers across six areas specific to the business.

“We pushed the question banks out to the entire firm that was merging in and said, ‘If you have a question, put it in the bank and our leadership is committed to have every question answered for you before our go-live date’” she explained.

If people asked something, leadership didn’t get to skip it, but they could say they would come back later with more detail. The software also included a tool to upvote questions that were most urgent for everybody, thus highlighting to leadership what the main concerns might be.

“Psychologically, the question banks provide people in the merging organization a visible place they can go and see the question that got asked,” said Helwig. “It’s tangible recognition that our firm cares about their concerns, and their questions won’t get brushed aside or ignored.”

Streamlined meetings and comms that fit into the regular cadence

On the day of the announcement to merge, Pinion hosted meetings for their people and the new people that coincided with Pinion’s quarterly all-hands.

“By not making it a special meeting, it simmered down the level of freak-out,” said Helwig. “There’s something about calling a special meeting that creates a beautiful level of panic. What’s going to happen? Are they going to let everybody go? So we used an existing planned meeting to say when we were going to announce the combination and did it in a conjoined way.”

The same day as the first meeting, Pinion launched a communication strategy centered around a special M&A “Gear Up” newsletter. Every two weeks, Pinion published two versions of the newsletter, one for the incoming organization and one for current employees, that provided updates including:

• Who’s coming on what team and what new teams would look like.
• What the offices would look like.
• What tech they would need to use coming into a new team.
• Relevant benefits information.

“We tried to keep it parallel, but we shared different information based on what each group needed to know,” Helwig said.

A manager buddy system

Helwig’s team also partnered with HR to set up a buddy system at the manager level using a free internet tool called Wheel Decide that generated conversation starters like “What’s your favorite movie?” Pinion created its own question wheels branded with the Pinion logo that were then sent to leaders who were participating in the buddy system.

“We also did a a bio sheet for them to fill out and share with each other,” Helwig shared. “That way, they had some structure around starting a conversation. That made the expectation that you would get in touch with your buddy every couple of weeks a little less awkward.”

The buddy system helped with the culture integration because each new leader had somebody they could ask questions and get to know. Pinion was thoughtful about the pairing of folks with complementary work functions, with HR setting the pairings and comms assisting with the communication and setting up the tools. The feedback post-integration was that the buddy program was positive, said Helwig.

A friendly contest

Pinion also took time to have a little fun with the incoming organization by launching a summer vacation photo contest wherein employees at both organizations could submit pictures. Administrative assistants from the two firms cross-judged the other organization’s photos, with a short video introducing the judges and their favorite vacation memories.

“We got people that were not the executives out there early and started getting some view inside the organization in a different level,” Helwig remembers. “That choice was really positive and helpful, because it started a blending at all levels rather than just our leadership layer.”

This full story is exclusive to members of Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council. Learn more about joining here.