In a rapidly changing landscape, companies go through many mergers and acquisitions. These transactions enable organisations to bring on board the right people with talents, technologies and ideas so that they can continue to innovate and grow. However, there is a complex process behind these transactions. When organisations give sufficient attention to the human side of the transaction, they are able to avoid losing transaction value. When they effectively address the human side, they are even able to create a lot of value.
Pension risks and labour relations are important points to consider, particularly at the start of the transaction. After the transaction has been concluded, HR plays an important role in supporting the business and its employees to make the transaction a success. HR offers this support in areas such as remuneration, assisting with the organisational design and preparing and implementing it, and setting up the HR processes and systems. HR departments with a lean structure within organisations do not always have the capacity or skills to support your M&A team during the transaction process. PwC can provide you with this flexible capacity and can support you throughout the process to ensure that you can optimise the value of your workforce in the transaction.
Once the workforce has been informed about the transaction, questions and uncertainties increase, whereas business continuity and retaining people is extremely important. That is why you should announce a structured and coordinated communications plan. You should support managers so they are able to provide effective guidance to their teams. These may be natural questions, such as: ‘will I be out of a job soon?’, ‘what’s going to happen to my salary?’, ‘will I have a new manager?’, ‘who can I turn to with questions?’.
In order to have answers to these questions, the outline of the integration and the resulting People & HR strategy are important.
In a transaction, the transition from the existing remuneration structure for management to a new structure is important. The new remuneration structure has to be in line with the strategic goals of the company. This guarantees that management has the right focus and motivation. Whether you are the purchaser, seller or an executive, we will be pleased to support you with keeping executive remuneration on the right track, before, during and after the transaction. This process can also be a catalyst for your environmental, social and governance (ESG) objectives, for example.
PwC’s People in Deals specialists work with clients globally on these questions. We do this for a full range of transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, business restructuring and capital events such as an IPO. We drive value for our clients across the entire transaction cycle:
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