Today’s supercharged merger and acquisition market underscores just how valuable business leaders perceive these transactions to be for driving growth and increasing value. Yet in focusing on the integration end goal, many companies prioritize customer-facing elements, such as sales and marketing, and let other key change management and integration areas languish. Deprioritizing them can result in delays, missed synergies, and employee burnout, and prevent you from realizing the full value of the integration. 

Here are five commonly overlooked, high-value integration considerations and tips for effectively addressing each of these essential elements during the post-merger integration: 

1. Addressing the lack of employee bandwidth
The current low unemployment rate, pace of deals, and dynamics of remote or hybrid workforces mean that internal teams are already stretched thin even before an integration hits their desks. Asking them to take on even greater responsibilities risks burnout, which unfortunately is all too common in the months following a close. Ignoring or failing to acknowledge and address the problem can hinder your path to full optimization.

During the post-merger integration, firms need to be realistic about whether they have the internal subject matter experience, the right leaders, and teams with enough capacity to take ownership of their function areas in order to drive the integration they seek. Some leaders may be able to look out post-integration and re-imagine their future departments, but some can’t.

To make the most of your talent pool and fill in the necessary gaps, it’s important to distinguish between ongoing resource needs versus one-time, deal-specific expertise, which can be outsourced on a short-term basis.

2. Missing critical windows of opportunity
To ensure you realize the full value of your merger, your organization should start thinking about post-merger integrations early, even as early as the due diligence phase. 

Day 1 preparedness starts well before the deal closes. A successful integration happens when the integration team starts working with an advisory team early in the process. Waiting until an acquisition is complete wastes valuable time. Why? 

There’s often a magic window of opportunity when teams are primed for change—they know to expect new things post-merger. Waiting too long allows sub-optimal processes to set in, which will be difficult to course correct later. Use the energy and the expectation of change to fuel the engagement of your employee base to make the anticipated changes more easily. 

The earlier you start building synergies, the greater the total return on those initiatives will be.

3. Focusing the integration on systems only
In the rush of integration, it can be easy to focus exclusively on systems. But a post-merger integration is also about bringing together people, departments, and cultures. The success of any M&A initiative depends heavily on the success of the human capital that implements it.

What should your management do to ensure a smooth integration of people?

• Be transparent
  Teams should be kept apprised of what the deal’s goals are and what the investment thesis is.
• Be understanding
  People can be very tied to the way they’ve always done their jobs and can be resistant to change. Help them see the benefits for themselves and their departments.
• Identify stakeholders
  Determine who the critical team members are and what roles they’ll play in the future.

4. Failing to scale
When companies are used to bootstrapping, building scalability may not be part of their culture. Many companies believe that the processes and systems that got them to the point they’re at shouldn’t be tampered with. 

Unfortunately, that thinking can lead companies to miss out on opportunities for expansion, and being tied to manual processes can hamper both growth and profits. Some departments, such as finance, are more prone to it than others.

5. Ignoring culture
Many employees choose to stay with an organization because of its company culture. An M&A deal means that the culture is bound to change in unknown ways, which often creates anxiety.

It’s essential to understand that this is a normal human reaction to change. By doing so, you can help your teams better work through the change.

• Communicate. Keep teams in the loop about planned changes—everyone wants to know what’s going on.
• Be upfront. As roles shift and positions are eliminated, it’s natural for employees to be nervous, which can lead to a stressful work environment. Transparency about staffing changes helps to stamp out a toxic culture.
• Small gestures. Consider ways to get everyone focused on the future with things like desk drops of branded gifts bearing the new entity’s name and logo.

Merging two companies is never simple or easy. With so much emphasis directed toward driving growth and increasing value, less attention is given to the essential elements needed to make it all happen. Worse, these post-merger considerations always involve the company’s most important asset: its people. By dedicating internal or external resources to focus on human capital priorities, including resource allocation, culture building, and change management, companies can significantly increase the likelihood of successful integration. 

Learn more about how RSM’s M&A integration advisors can help you increase deal value, realize synergies and achieve business continuity.

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