Avoid This Costly M&A Leadership Mistake!
HR M&A Roundtable
Practitioners Teaching Practitioners How People, Leadership, & Culture Drive M&A Deal Value.
Welcome to this edition of the HR M&A Roundtable Roundup.
What’s in This Edition
This issue tackles two major challenges in M&A:
Plus, unlock exclusive Early Bird Pricing for our upcoming Virtual People Synergy Summit—designed specifically to equip leaders with strategies to make confident, impactful decisions in high-pressure M&A environments.
M&A Meets RTO: Keeping Remote Teams Engaged
Why This Matters
Post-pandemic, many large corporations are enforcing RTO, while small to mid-sized firms remain remote. That divide creates tension in M&A, where integrating remote teams can make or break deal success.
The M&A Reality Check
Remote employees are often overlooked in integrations. Without a clear plan, engagement drops, turnover spikes, and productivity tanks—hurting deal value.
How to Make Remote Integration Work
What Happens If You Get It Wrong
A remote-first SaaS company was acquired by a global firm with a strict office policy. Leadership assumed employees would comply.
Mastering the Merger
M&A success isn’t just about combining balance sheets—it’s about keeping people engaged. Companies that respect remote culture and communicate transparently win the integration game.
Early Bird Registration Now Open for the Virtual People Synergy Summit!
Registration is NOW OPEN for the Virtual People Synergy Summit (link), happening April 8–9, 2025!
Join top HR and M&A leaders to learn actionable strategies, connect with private equity and strategic professionals, and prepare for the surge in deal activity this year.
Why Attend?
Don’t Miss Early Bird Pricing: Secure your spot for just $447 before prices go up on February 1!?
New for 2025: We’re back in Boston for a hybrid conference this fall (dates TBD), but this spring, you can attend from anywhere with our fully virtual summit experience.
Special Thanks to Our Sponsor: A huge shoutout to Globalization Partners for their generous support in making this event possible. Their expertise in global HR solutions aligns perfectly with our mission to create people-first M&A success.
Leadership in M&A: Don’t Let This Mistake Cost You Your Best People
A large multinational acquired a fast-growing startup. On paper, it was a great deal. The startup had a strong customer base, an innovative product, and a highly engaged team.
The Problem
Three months in, employees started leaving—not just any employees, but the key talent that made the startup successful. Leadership was caught off guard. They assumed people would stay because the deal meant more stability, better benefits, and career growth opportunities. But they hadn’t accounted for the emotional side of M&A.
What Went Wrong
How They Turned It Around
After a wake-up call from exit interviews, leadership pivoted fast:
The Lesson
If you don’t proactively manage job satisfaction, you’re not just losing people—you’re losing the knowledge, creativity, and momentum that made the deal attractive in the first place.
Speaker Spotlight
In our latest HR M&A Roundtable session, Rey Ramirez, Founder of Thrive HR Consulting, shared insights on building trust with acquired teams during M&A. Rey emphasized that trust is built through consistent actions, open communication, and empathy, fostering engagement and smoother transitions. He highlighted the power of transparency in business transactions, sharing experiences where honest leadership resolved challenges and built credibility. During breakout discussions, participants shared best practices, including using storytelling to foster transparency, showing empathy during transitions, and maintaining open communication during uncertainty. Rey’s session underscored that trust is the foundation of successful M&A integration.
Enhance Your M&A Expertise with Klint Kendrick’s Online Course
Navigate the complexities of mergers and acquisitions confidently with M&A for Human Resource Professionals, created by Klint Kendrick, PhD, SPHR. This comprehensive course clarifies HR’s critical role during due diligence and integration, empowering you with practical tools to lead your organization through successful M&A transactions.
Upcoming Roundtables
March 12 – Breaking Barriers: Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Cross-Border M&A (Led by Nick Williams)
March 19 – Building a Shared Future: The Art of Leadership in M&A (Led by Dharmendra Singh)
April 8-9 – People Synergy Summit (Virtual Conference)
June 4, 11, 18, 25 – Mastering HR in Cross-Border M&A: A 4-Week Bootcamp (Wednesdays, 3-5 PM Central)
Week of September 15 – People Synergy Summit (Hybrid: Boston/Virtual) + In-Person Training
Stay ahead of M&A challenges—keep learning, keep leading.
HR M&A Jobs
Follow us on LinkedIn for HR M&A opportunities. You can also look for #HRMAJobs. If you’d like to share an opening we missed on our feed, let us know and we will help spread the word.
Board Member | Entrepreneur | M&A Dilligence & Integration Advisor
2 周Sometimes a costly M&A mistake is caused by an acquiring leader's perception that a past practice was meaningless to the acquired employees, rather than the meaningful thing it actually was. For example, an acquired company always sent a packaged turkey to each employee's home before Thanksgiving. The acquiring leader felt the practice (identified during due diligence) was an unnecessary expense and cost synergy opportunity which no one would miss. He eliminated it unilaterally without communicating the change below the senior management team. The irate acquired employees began contacting HR after Thanksgiving to report their turkey wasn't delivered, and you can write the rest of that story. The meaning wasn't about missing the drumsticks, rather the acquired employees felt stuffed by the unexplained end of a company and family Thanksgiving tradition. At least the Cratchit family didn't expect a Christmas goose from Ebenezer Scrooge. To avoid a self-inflicted M&A leadership mistake, encourage leaders to consider prior practices through the stakeholder's perception, and as this post recommends, set expectations early. Klint C. Kendrick, PhD, SPHR Bill Mortimore Ute Miller Brendan McElroy Brandon Curry