While mergers and acquisitions happen all year round, the month with the highest frequency of deals has been found to be December, according to new analysis. This may have something to do with the end of the year providing an incentive to companies to close out deals.
While companies will buy or merge with another company in hopes of boosting the growth of their own business or, in contrast, fending off competition, acquisitions often leave employees with many questions about the new company structure. In turn, this puts leadership in a critical position to set the stage for the tone of the transition to come.
Spiceworks Ziff Davis Global Manager Richard Jalichandra is no stranger to acquisitions and adopting company methods, as he explains to Digital Journal.
Jalichandra begins by addressing some of the initial impacts of the process upon people, noting: “With acquisitions comes questions and concerns of feeling lost, so we wanted to make a statement that we trust [our employees] and that they’re going to do the right thing on behalf of the business. The obvious thing when taking care of the business is to take care of the business.”
There are other things that tend to get overlooked, as Jalichandra points out: “The less obvious part of taking care of the business is to take care of yourself. You can’t do your part if you end up burned out and stressed out to the point where you want to quit your job and/or retire.”
An important counterbalance is the implementation of a ‘paid time off’ (PTO) process for employees to help them to manage the change.
Jalichandra continues: “With that being said, the PTO process was one of the first things” to look at, adding that “a flexible PTO process is best when combining policies to show employees that we have a flexible environment that’s going to support their life and their career.”
To maintain good will, it is preferable that the paid time off policy remains similar under the new corporate structure.
