Getting your player ready...
There could be a surge in survival mergers as strong companies capitalize on the weak economy. This could be bad news for workers at struggling companies that decide to unite, since these corporate marriages are the most likely to result in mass layoffs.
From 2009 to June of this year, mergers and acquisitions have resulted in over 110,000 job cuts. 2011 has seen major deals such as M&T Bank and Wilmington Trust, whose announced merger led to 720 job cuts, and AOL and Huffington Post, whose marriage will see 900 layoffs.
Other industries that are ripe for survival mergers include retail, manufacturing, consumer products and pharmaceutical. Workers in these sectors should definitely be on guard for the possibility of a sudden merger.
In most mergers, the workers with the highest risk of job loss are the ones at the company being acquired. In many instances, the headquarters of the acquiring company is retained, while the target company sees its headquarters shuttered. Meanwhile, workers at all levels of the acquiring company have a distinct advantage over the workers from the target company: they are familiar with the company culture, its operations and procedures.
This is not to say that workers at the company being acquired have no chance. However, they cannot just sit around and see what happens. They must take aggressive steps to save their jobs.
If you are in that kind of situation, your most important action is to accept the new company’s ways of doing things, hopefully without question. You must conform or you are not going to stay there. You cannot walk around saying, “We did not do it that way before.”
We find that largest numbers of managers from an acquired company who lose their jobs do so because they fail to focus on the future of the new firm, the way the new parent wants to operate.
Your position should be that the merger is the best thing that ever happened to the company and you are eagerly looking forward to being a member of the new team, with emphasis on the word “team,” because that is the attitude that the new owners desire.
It is critical to demonstrate to the new employer your indispensability. You need to determine as soon as possible what the new reporting procedures are and then make it a point to update your supervisor on what you have accomplished. Back that up with the appropriate statistical evidence.
As a member of the company that was acquired in the merger, the last thing you want to do is bring up anything that may cause a negative reaction to you from the new management. Immediately following an acquisition is not the time to ask for a raise, a vacation, or to get into an argument with anyone about anything. Even more importantly, you should take care not to say or do anything that may be misinterpreted.
Even if exchanging barbs and witticisms around the water cooler may have been standard operating procedure under the old regime, you cannot afford to take any chances on that with the new employers. What you and your associates regard as joking or banter may be taken very seriously by the new owners, to your disadvantage.
You should make no efforts to change jobs internally – provided the decision is not made for you by the new employer – for at least six months. There are likely to be several opportunities for those who survive the merger because the new employer will be reorganizing to accomplish newly established corporate objectives. Reorganizations permit fresh starts and the assuming of new responsibilities, offering new opportunities for the enterprising manager who knows how to take advantage of them.
