Session 4 Work Shop Oct 22,2008

Imagine that one organisation is merging with another. You need to consider how 2 (new owners and the old employees) groups communicate.

• What emotional aspects do you see involved ?
• What would you do to improve communication on each side(owners , employees) ?
• Any support of information technologies ?

Write a 300 word narrative with your strategies on how you could make this merging "smooth", taking into account your answers to the above questions.

Beginning our narrative it would be wise to set up the scene. The two merging organisations are two companies based on different countries and with a massive difference in numbers of stuff. The Q Company is the one who bought the U company. Q Company is based in India and occupies 200 employees while U company is based in the UK and occupies only 15 employees.
In response to the first question about the emotional aspect of the merge we have to agree that fear is the first emotion acquired by everyone, the new owners and the employees.Q companies’ owners fear about the U companies’ employee reaction. How do they feel about us? Should we consider ourselves as the aggressive company that bought them? They also have second thoughts about the problems in communication due to the different location. Fear of integrating a whole new company into theirs and how can everyone apply on the same rules, same protocols and same technologies. Fears about entering a whole new market for them and finally a question that will be crux until the new company shows some results. Was it worth it? U company on the other hand also has fears. The first and most basic one is the fear of the unknown. Fear of the cultural differences and even fear of unemployment. They know that they are loosing a big portion of their independence while they might find it a bit intimidating to merge with 200 employees in another country. On the other hand, some of the employees might feel happy about the new opportunities arising with this merge.
All these fears represent some of the most basic problems in merging companies. To make these fears disappear for employers and employees we present our solution. A package of solutions that can make things easier for everyone with the main goal to be productivity and efficiency. Firstly we would create a communications department on both sides so we can identify clearly who is in charge of communications. Both companies have to use the same IT strategies including databases and servers. Get the employees to have departmental meetings with each other so that everyone knows his homologue in the other company. A good idea would also be to have teaching seminars on each side for new procedures and changed IT facilities. Finally, someone have to be appointed to integrate the two networks.
For all this to happen, technology will have the main role. Video and Telephone conferences, e-mails, IM's and in the end the Company's integrated mainframe interface will help these two companies to become one.