Intranets embody the culture, processes, and governance structure of an organization. After a merger and acquisition, new employees can feel lost, resulting in a decrease in productivity. This practical guide aims to show how the intranet can be used to welcome new employees, instead of becoming a point of contention.

Step 1: Centralize Employee Communication

During a Merger & Acquisition (M&A), rumors and speculation can run rampant. The change management team needs to centralize all employee communication. To tightly control employee communication, the following steps are recommended:

• Designate one intranet as the primary intranet.
• Ensure all employees use the primary intranet to access company resources, using multiple domain Active Directory sync.
• Make any other intranets secondary, and provide links via the primary intranet.
• Restrict access to secondary intranets to only the employees who need access until the secondary intranets can be depreciated, using external link security.
• Use comment moderation until new employees are fully acclimatized to the current culture
• Require content approval by the change management team for all employee communication

Step 2: Connect People

With a merger, new relationships will have to be formed between the current and new employees. A searchable People Directory helps employees make these new connections. Employees can find each other by searching by name, email address, phone number, title, or skills list. Add new employees to the People Directory using multiple domain Active Directory Sync. The People Directory helps employees put a face to a name using profile pictures, which can automatically be imported from your Active Directory.

Understanding the new hierarchy during mergers & acquisitions can be a challenge. You can visually display the new hierarchy to employees using the Employee Organizational Chart. This gives employees a display of any employee’s supervisor, subordinates and department members along with their contact information.

It is important to promote employee communications during mergers & acquisitions. A great way to strengthen social ties on your intranet is using the Featured Employee or Employee Milestone application to display birthdays or work anniversaries. This allows employees to send each other greetings directly through the application, improving employee communication, engagement and user adoption.

 Step 3: Merge Documents & Processes

As you consolidate departments between organizations, the documents, forms, and workflows must also be consolidated. You can do this by uploading batches of documents to the primary intranet using a multiple file upload. Then import the data with custom fields or columns using CSV import. From there, you can base approval workflows based on security groups of supervisor relationships as opposed to individual names.

Lastly, you can create an unlimited number of new Department Sites with their own document libraries and forms to replace existing intranet sites.

Step 4: Address Culture Clash

Employees who have taken to heart the values of the company can be empowered to the make the right decisions. However, it will take time for new employees to adjust to the new culture. Until that happens, you will need to formalize ad-hoc decision making processes.

Use Online Forms and Approval Workflows to ensure standard processes are followed. Use the Online Training Calendar feature to manage classes and registration for new employees, ensuring everyone is trained consistently in a seamless manner.

A best practice for educating employees on corporate culture is through the use of customer stories and videos. You can post videos on the intranet that talk about the history of the company as well as have employees share their history with the company  through Discussion Forums or Message Boards.

It will take time for new employees to adjust to the current culture. Because the intranet home page has such high visibility, it is the perfect place to reinforce the values of the company over time by doing the following:

• Publish weekly or monthly blog posts by the CEO or other executives
• Publicly recognize employees for excellent customer service using the Employee Recognition app
• Publish articles by HR explaining the essence of good customer service
• Publish monthly KPIs such as monthly customer retention rates

Preventing a loss in productivity after mergers & acquisitions can be difficult. A flexible intranet can play a vital role in centralizing employee communication, connecting people, merging documents and resources and addressing culture clash.

Have you or your organization gone through any mergers & acquisitions? If so, explain your experience below and share how your intranet helped smooth the process.