Job Satisfaction And Complexity Of The Employees

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

My Thesis mostly talks about the problems faced by the Employees in a Merging or an Acquiring firm. The research includes also about the satisfaction in the job and also the complexity involved during the work with the HR policies or with the Managers or with the payroll or with the compliance. More on top of what the problems are the behavioural changes of the organization are studied, we would require knowing how the behaviour of the employees changes according to the merging or acquiring of the companies.

Thus, the research also shows how the merging and acquisitions create financial problems, management in the firm and also mainly the culture among the employees change. The main problem starts when the employees are told about the merging or acquiring from/by another firm and it ends up to when the employees leaves the company not cope with the change. Moreover to add on, these issues does not lead just to create a chaos among employees, the satisfaction level and the interest towards the job also comes down.

From the company’s perspective, the employees’ talents, skills and their impeccable knowledge would go in vain when the merge or acquisitions doesn’t happen well. The companies not just lose their employees, but also their reputation among the other companies and also with the general public or the ex-employees and perspective employees. This also affects the future scope of the company from their getting clients for their business till the ranking by the Business Magazines of rating the Best Employer in a country. It may include the current clients getting backed out from them, even if their satisfaction level was better at the past. The deals getting closed before the final date to finalize their contracts is also the biggest issue faced normally by the companies across the globe for mergers and acquisitions. The synergy being ridiculous will happen only when the cultures of two different companies from even the same country/domain will be the worst. These chaos has been created all due to the employees in-adoptability to the cultural change and as well as the organizational change with the high expectations being broken from the Employee’s perspective.

The confusions pertaining to the employees about what the organization has not decided on whether the policies of company A being followed or the policies of company B being followed will create also a biggest chaos among the employees. This complexity with the organizational changes and the HR policies which is unsure from the Human Resources side or from the Transition Manager’s side would worsen the situation to such an extent that the employee couldn’t take a step ahead in finishing one task starting from logging in to the computer till signing off for the day.

These issues have been arousing coz of the equilibrium being not met between the employer and the employees and how the Human Resources have projected to the employees about the activities dealt during the SHIFT phase of the merge or acquisition.

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All information related to the company Dell Services contained in Mr, Karthik Vasudevan’s professional thesis is strictly confidential and should, under no circumstances, be diffused outside ROUEN Business School.

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Pascal KRUPKA Student Karthik Vasudevan

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Head of Postgraduate Programmes

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DECLARATION OF ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

I Karthik VASUDEVAN student enrolled in the International MBA program certify that the data and information contained in the professional thesis entitled have not been plagiarized.

City       : St.Catherine’s, ON, Canada                                                             

Date      : 28th December 2013                                                    

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Acknowledgments

TO WHOMESOVER IT MAY BE CONCERNED:

I, KARTHIK VASUDEVAN hereby would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt thankfulness to the people listed below who have helped me in completing this thesis with full moral and mutual help in all difficult situations.

I am indebted to my Professor Dr Masoud SHADNAM, who has been my kindling effect to take one topic from the Organizational Behaviour by consistently giving me ideas; driving me to get the target; had been patient and friendly to make me understand; pretty clear in what he wants to say; and a great teacher.

I owe my deepest gratitude to Professor Dr Ariane OLLIER-MALATERRE, who nurtured the concepts of Effective Organization with Change Management during our start of MBA and with her various examples and real time change management problems happening in the organizations had made me to think about to take a Change management topic as my research paper for my MBA.

My sincere big thanks to my class mate Pragya Goel, who had been my wonderful support and a great friend in making me understanding the concepts of any subject when I am stuck and a shoulder to lean in times of grief.

Our Head of Research, Dr Yehuda Baruch, for his vital encouragement and support by teaching us how to do our research, our Director Dr Pascal Krupka, for his understanding and my friends & family for their continuous motivation and financial help.

Most especially my friend Abhishek Angadi, who works with DELL Services Pvt. Ltd., India who had been helping me with the data, had been my all time helping hands personally and officially. My sincere thanks to other staffs at my ex-company DELL by providing me the survey done at the right time and giving appropriate information.

Off course to The Almighty, without whom these things are impossible.

Sincerely,

Karthik Vasudevan

Introduction

The primary motive behind this thesis is about the Mergers and Acquisitions, and in that how companies change the employees’ perspective and how it leads to the Employers’ and Employees’ disappointments. Instead of two companies forming synergies and innovation to take the companies ahead in their field, it takes back to the scratch or to the 0th level. All these issues during the Merge or Acquisitions can lead up to the closure of the company starting from the harm of strategic future of the firm till the brand name.

The Project is innovative for me in many cases, as I am interested in knowing more about mergers and acquisitions. And I would like to specialize in Human Resources, specifically in Change Management Division. These issues which I’ve faced and as the employees of an organization can do this project well, because of the self-experience. And moreover, a company like DELL couldn’t solve all of these issues made me to wonder. Hence, thought of revising my issues happened and do an analysis on the same. I could always go back to show the results and findings what I did and the solutions for the problems, if still persists. These issues were not more of an official problem, but a lot has turned into personal issues which I would like to do a research on the same.

Moreover, my research findings will create a differentiation mainly to the employees as how they felt during the transition and the losses which they incurred. Moreover, this topic has not been done before by anybody as there are lots of topics in M&A but not how employees being faced problems due to the irregular acquisitions or improper mergers. These problems are really critical issues which may lead to dis-satisfaction and lack of working sensation to the employees who had been working well before the acquisition and obvious change management would lead to chaos. The dream of mergers or acquisitions by the companies would often be mis-guided or the due diligence not performed well. Hence, these problems may be faced and the "during transition" stage is very important and plays a vital role in the company as Change is necessary but not avoidable and it is prevented by the employees of that organization.

There had been thousands of research done on M&A, but still they don’t have readymade solutions for many of the M&A problems, and a lot are incomplete in some way. Either the research done with full and well explanation doesn’t reach the intended organization or the organization tries to merge or acquire looking for a non-value profit coming out of the synergy.

The thesis talks always about the employee’s difficulties and problems faced during or after the merge, but when we see the root cause of all these issues wouldn’t be from the company’s leadership team, but from the HR department of the company. The communication from the leadership team to the HR would’ve been better to make it clear that there will be a huge turn in the company’s policies and there will be a huge shift in everything that the company is going to incur on. But, when it reaches the ordinary employee from the HR is where it breaks and goes as ashes.

The topic of M&A are now widely used and understood by many of the executives just to strengthen and maintain their place in this competitive market, and a lot of companies have kept the M&A as their strategy of success or expansion in the globe. The merger and acquisition business deals in India amounted to $40 billion during the initial 2 months in the year 2007. The total estimated value of mergers and acquisitions in India for 2007 was greater than $100 billion. It is twice the amount of mergers and acquisitions in 2006. Thus, we can say that M&A has become a day to day transaction now-a- days. They find M&A to be the fastest and the most efficient tool to expand into a new market or to intrude into a hidden potential market. But, there are plenty of studies also which proves the failure of such an M&A is due to the problems of HR and other activities involving DURING the shift.

For example: Let’s take Chrysler & Daimler or Sprint and Nexel or Bell Atlantic and Tele-communications, what we all have common in all these mergers and broke up was the same issue. They had the cultural clashes between the companies event they were from the same background doing the same business. All these could’ve been fixed with Daimler and Chrysler when the HR’s taken the cultural differences as the main issue and sorted it out. On more to add on, the cost-cutting happened with the increase in cost of employees and poor management all could’ve been saved with a million dollar money. Hence, we could conclude that the problems with all these mergers are the HRs in those companies either being lethargic about the merge or they haven’t facilitated their stake holders who are the leadership team and the employees. The same issue happened with Yahoo and Microsoft where the Yahoo employees were pushed to become Microsoft employees, wherein the Microsoft has a fast based culture and on the other hand Yahoo has a lot to do with fun and frolic during the work. All the major companies have become successful due to the mergers or acquisitions, but the majority fail just due to the management and the cultural differences which the HR never takes it serious. HR’s job is far ahead of just being a middle level manager of the human resources managing the people, budge etc., it has lots to do more than that such as they are responsible for creating a new culture in a merged company. There are lots of cases where it must be followed to keep a secret between the leadership team and the employees, but not all must be kept behind and it has to be revealed sooner or later at some point of time. There must be a clear ideas spread from the leadership team to the employees about what’s the plan and future of the company and its employees. The HRs in this case are just not facilitating in the middle as the mediators, but they can persuade people to change their mind set from bad to good. They run a crucial job during these phases of the mergers and acquisitions: viz: Pre Acquisition, Deal Making and Post Acquisition. In the phase of Pre Acquisition, the Human Resources top managers from both the sides has to enterprise to make up the culture and the vision of the organization to the employees to bring in the readiness of the Merge happening between the two companies. One small example of a very good synch with the Human Resources and the Leadership team was the Maruthi Suzuki happened in India which is still the leading car seller. When it comes to the Deal making process, they work with two different responsibilities. Human Resources have to help the leadership team to avoid fights so that the executive team merge well with the companies. Getting advises from the employees and asking their opinions about a better merger and bridging the gap between them and the leadership team so as to check whether everybody is on the same page. Finally in the phase of the Post Acquisition, the Human Resources team has to re in force and align all the HR policies and processes for the new culture such as roles given, rewards and recognition, performance metrics etc.

To support all these above rules, Towers Watson report helps us to find out how important is the integration of the HR’s role and it says clearly that the early involvement of the HR inside the merging will result in assessing better potential opportunities and threats.

There are a lot of managers in a lot of acquiring firms who would not know how important acquisition integration is important for Mergers and Acquisition’s success. And they’re not aware of the problems happening with the deal making too. While the merges are happening, the parties from both the parties has to give a push and the combine potential will create a synergy and that makes the driving force for M&A’s success. Such a kind of a merge and acquisition, really a high such potential is required to make the merge or acquisition 100%.

The Leadership team also do a big mistake while choosing the companies to merge, that the company has to look for a related merge of the company from same sector, domain and industry and moreover having the same knowledge and culture. An un-related merge will obviously lead to a failure, thus losing everything. This kind of synergy requires a high costs on interaction and coordination from both the parties. More on the measure of the performance of Mergers and Acquisitions in economics & accounting are tough, especially when dealt with an internal dynamics problem occurring inside the company. The key accelerators in success factors are the resistance of employees which is important; integration of the organization and combined potential and all the three has to act together.

Hypothesis:

In the above told table of HR Issues and HR Implications and Actions, the most complicated and the important phase is the Managing the Change process. It has been told from the starting till the ending phase of all the HR issues, where in Communicating with and including stakeholders wouldn’t matter a lot and would like to critic that as a stakeholder (client) would mind about his/her money and business improvements and off course has a belief that the company will create a synergy when it goes in tie up with another thus creating profit. But, that doesn’t form the main picture of the area of study which we are concentrating on.

In any companies nowadays, with the issues of Mergers and Acquisitions, the Human Resources Policies tend to suffer with main two characteristics basically such as:

The Human Resources are not coherent significantly in a relationship with the Senior Management in following the strategy followed by them or shown by them. They tend to change it or give less importance.

The Human Resources Department clearly not articulate nor integrate as a function of the ideas told by the senior management or the strong ruling ideas proposed by them to the employees. This break in the communication loses the capacity to reinforce each other.

Mergers and Acquisitions are not just to do with the numbers of long balance sheets, new niche markets, and greater synergies, they are really complicated and they change the shape of the business going on. It’s more to deal with the events of the employees. As is traditional in acquisition literature, integration is largely defined by the degree of intrusion of the acquiring company into the acquired organization (for example, Buono and Bowditch). Although the acquiring organization may also experience change as a result of the acquisition, the traditional focus on integration reflects a concern with the extent to which the acquiring organization creates changes in the acquired organization.

Areas of Study:--

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

The Change Management is the main area of study where we would be concentrating on and how does or doesn’t it affect the employees in this kind of atmosphere. The secondary problem is with the Decoding of the HR policies to adhere to either company A or company B or both merged is where the question arises from the HR or the Leadership team and this question has to be answered before the merge and during the merge, if this question arises, then it may not lead to a successful merger. And if they’re supposed to be merged, then it got to be merged before the official merging happens and told to the employees during the merge about the HR policies, by which the Employees would not be confused with any of the things. And it’s just a small change which may happen and can be digested by any employee during the SHIFT. Change management is very important in an organization ask the task of managing the change is not that easy and this has to be handled in a systematic and planned way to create a successful merge. But the change which has to be brought inside an organization has to be initiated from inside or outside. And there may be both kind of responses such as reactive and proactive as per the change happening.

We can relate this theory with the researches already done years ago such as "Much of the extensive HRM literature on M&As pertains to individual and collective employee reactions (e.g., Hayes 1979, Larsson et al. 1996, Marks 1982, Schweiger et al. 1987, Schweiger and Walsh 1990). Individual employee reactions have been conceptualized primarily from psychological (Levinson 1970, Marks and Mirvis 1986) and career (Hirsch 1987, Walsh 1989) perspectives, whereas collective reactions have been viewed from a cultural perspective (Buono et al. 1985, Nahavandi and Malekzadeh 1988). In either case, previous research has generally shown that acquired company employees react unfavourably to M&As, a result often cited to explain why many M&As are not successful (e.g., Blake and Mouton 1985, Hambrick and Cannella 1993, Walter 1985). Un-fortunately, with few exceptions (Chatterjee et al. 1992, Datta 1991), the notion that negative employee reactions help account for unsuccessful M&As has historically been based on evidence that is more anecdotal than empirical (e.g., Arnold 1984, Searby 1969). Why are employee reactions to M&As so negative? First, research from a psychological perspective has identified such problems as "we versus they" antagonism, condescending attitudes, distrust, tension, and hostility (Astrachan 1990, Blake and Mouton 1985, Levinson 1970). Relatedly, Marks and Mirvis (1986, p. 41) describe the "merger syndrome," whereby employees of the acquired firm "mourn a corporate death," and deal with worst-case rumours, various stress reactions, and constricted communication. Second, M&As can severely affect career plans of employees by forcing layoffs, relocation, and the loss of individual influence (Greenwood et al. 1994, Hirsch 1987, Walsh 1989). For example, in a study of a multi-billion dollar merger, Gaertner (1986) found that career mobility, career patterns, and career development activities were all adversely affected in substantial ways. Finally, culture clashes are not uncommon during the integration process as two organizations, each with established routines, attempt to reach some type of accommodation (Chatterjee et al. 1992). Typically, it is the acquired firm that finds its cultural traditions most challenged. (Finkelstein, 1999)"

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR:--

As we know already that the Organizational Behaviour as the name says that it is the behaviour of the organization. And this is the main topic which is the base for my thesis to write as it is more to do with the actions of the people and the stress which they undergo during the M&A process. Organizational Behaviour is the area of study of people’s behaviour that may be groups or individuals or the process. This may go up to an extent as how the people’s behaviour would change the organization’s behaviour too. This behaviour can be employee’s thinking, acting, working, attitude and responses to the reactions.

HR Related Issues:--

The next phase in difficulties comes the communicating to the employees from the HR where normally it lags either due to the lack of planning or improper communication at an improper time. The communication has to be started far before the merge happens and when the deal is open. Thus, the employee’s mind set would be ready to accept the change if it comes later or sooner. Moreover, the communication has to be made in such a way that the employees has to be given all importance and what are the advantages that the employee will have in that merge should be the main topic of the discussion, instead of talking about the leadership team’s message of the yearly turnover and the synergy which would be too high for an employee to know nor interested to know. Nurturing of the new company’s culture towards the old existing employees in both the organizations has to be dealt only with the good things about the new company which may be an acquirer or an acquired and to make them believe that there is not a big cultural or a policy shock which would happen. This communication should pay attention to their pay increase especially where the employees would be happy to agree the merge. By any case, the employee must not have a mentality or an idea that after the merge/acquiring, they would lose their identity or their opportunities or their plans which had been made with commitments would be scattered.

Due to the concerns of the employees from both the sides of the companies will have the questions running in their mind as in will they be fired or transferred to some other location or the work place will differ from the designated work. They should have to adjust with others in a congested environment or they may have compensation less than what they were paid or some benefits which they had before would be lost from their hands. The rapport which they’ve created with their managers or supervisor will go in vain or it has to be built from the scratch and their performance appraisal should happen with the new company in a new way. Their roles may change accordingly with their reporters under them. All the old commitment with their relationship would be gone to a disaster. And in case of couples, they might have issues in relocating to some other places where one will be one location and the other in another.

The change management process must be started with the employees and the queries/doubts/concerns should be solved at the earliest to make the employees satisfied with their current job and a promise that the new role after merge with their job wouldn’t affect them by any chance. Their issues has to be addressed in timely basis from the HR side and importantly it would be better if the leadership team talk directly to the employees in an open town hall sessions to address all kind of issues which may arise after the merge.

The problems with the new hires is the biggest challenge for them during the merge from their hiring till their exit, and when they join they join under one name and after merge they would get another revised offer letter with revised compensation plans with revised new job titles holding with the change in the package etc. This would pressurize the employees who join newly into an organization and could create fuzz in the employee’s mind whether they’ve made a mistake joining a merging company. And when there is a constant change in everything and the employer they never knew for picking up the policies and rules to be followed and the chaos created will be a big drawback for the merge which can cause employees to quit the organization.

This process of change management in a merging company is really a challenging one for both the employees and the employers. All these changes has to be started during the fixing the deal itself with project wise and phases to cover and execute it before it’s been communicated to the employee.

There are a huge set of rules and regulations to be followed during this change management and if not followed would lead to a big confusion to the organization. And suppose the whole organization needs a change and it requires a new paradigm which will replace established ways of doing business, the challenge is haunting. There were many researches shown and proved that the implementation of all major organizational change success rate is very low for many reasons depending upon the plan which they’ve made in the beginning before the merge.

Primarily when organizations are asked to change themselves, it is such a way similar asking an individual changing his/her lifestyle. All these changes can be done by consistent discipline, commitment, determination, persistence and a plan which is clear to implement the change.

Secondarily, to resist the change is a very natural phenomenon in the human kind. For Ex: When a human told to eat only grasses like how an animal eats. And in the process of managing the whole change is the most essential phase in the change management.

Finally, every change will create some kind of un-certainty among the folks. Normally, the organizations think and do very good business with their earlier business models, and they tend to doubt in a bad merge. Nevertheless, they select a same kind of company to merge or acquire, this may not happen. In any cases for a new merge or an acquisition, it may lead to a better or worse, as per the merging happened. Implementing the change in an organization, with the policy change and behaviour change, is so tedious and essential for their success, has to be maintained with human resistance and resistance of organization with pressure to complete the progress. Overall, managing this change management is so vital and essential for the implementation to be successful. But this progressive success can be only met by well versed process implementation and an excellent HR team, but there are authors who say that the Leadership team.

But, as we discussed about the communication gap between the First and the third level of management, proves pretty much as the leadership team can’t help the merge happen well when the HR team is not co-ordinating well with the employees. As, the blind following of the leadership team will not lead to be fruitful as they may be wrong in making decisions or conveying the message, instead the HR can make a work place better by communicating well. And all the process change or the policy change happening should be carry forwarded by the HR department and the Change Management leadership team attending the training, by covering gradually all the steps of an organizational areas.

The two companies having different styles of business or organizational behaviour go for a merge or an acquisition; there will be a clang between the companies which they go out from the scope of the objectives and aims which they were supposed to follow. Thus, the mergers and acquisitions will always have a huge impact on the employee or the other company who work with them.

When companies blindly follow their Mergers and Acquisitions rule and without knowing the impact of the negative synergy, and the biggest impact on the employees who work with them in both the organizations, result in the Employees leaving the organization, the dis-satisfaction of the clients or customers, ending up losing the revenue. More on top of all the personal issues of the employees affecting their pay scale, pension, benefits, insurance and designation with location transfer would also take place. The primary problem here would be the pay scale difference between the employee working in company A and the other in company B having the same experience and skillset but different salary.

Though both the companies merge who has the same organizational culture and industry, the clashes between the top management are so usual that may lead to the collapse of the merge. This happens most of the times, with the companies who are equal in standards and policies.

Among the employees, after the merge it is a normal tendency that the employees will be anxious about their separation from their colleagues or friends who were working, would leave the organization and may lead to the less production. This negative wave crosses across the projects and teams and hits the whole company and the employees are psychologically affected by every mean with these rumours spread wide inside the organization. This tends the employees demotivated and their concentration on their job going down. And always, employees are the main victims in a mergers and acquisitions as they will have a hard time understanding the new company’s rules and policies. It would be difficult for them to cope with the new change happening in the organization, and that’s when they will understand that there is no future growth for them and their dream has been broken disastrously. Thus, affecting their productivity and the loyalty to the company goes below the expected mark.

When said about the employees, even the leadership team who were responsible for all the change, would have difficulties and the merge might go out of control, resulting them in a higher stress level and this stress of frustration goes down to the sub-ordinates and devastates them through the chain of command.

Employees of both the companies are always scared about the treatment given by the other companies which would be a partiality differences in everything and be treated like from a step mother. The fear restores in their mind from the transferor company till the acquired company like the loss of their positions hierarchically which would be running in their mind in both the sides.

The reorganization and restructuring will happen a lot in the companies during this merge and acquisition and that’s the critical stage for the companies to digest the high costs incurred in the change management and the time taken which is very slow in the change. This tends to be sustaining from 6 to 9 months, and may go up to 2 years also which would require a lot of process and steps to be followed. There must be parties locating at both the sides of the companies and this is the most difficult step in the merging process. During these days of the merging there will be a huge impact in the work culture and also the change in behaviour of the employees working during those days with the either of the companies which disturbs the full organization indeed.

In any normal acquisition, there is one is superior and another inferior. Inferior, being the company which was bankrupt or going in loss and the Superior wanted to acquire it either by equities or by assets would always consider that the inferior’s name can be changed to the Superior one and hence that is considered to be a slave in this manner. The superior always called as the buyer treats the acquired company like a step mother adopting the orphan child for dominating as a step child. The dominant parent role is played by the company which acquires the inferior one, acts as a step mother, which we have already discussed earlier in the pages above. This type of set up happens only when there a lack of fitness between the companies.

Employees’ Psychology

The process of M&A always lead to many uncertainties which shifts the focus of the employees from their normal productive work to conflicts, growth in the career, layoffs, compensation etc. On top of this, the employees are worried about their adjustment with the new colleagues from the other part of the company. Every Mergers and Acquisitions starts involving the cost cutting, saving money from furniture till sacking the employees, and hence employees would be in chaos of their job security. All these psychological situations make the employees in a depressed mood and hence affecting his/her performance at their work place.

When companies merge, they have to see the other company’s values and compare with them and see whether it matches. Once successful value creation procedure matches well, the deal matching should be done, but no companies give importance to the value creation and hence the flop of M&A occurs soon. As, there will be a difference in the value created by both the companies, can create conflicts between them and will face the culture shock.

The employees face the inadaptability of the cultural shock and the change happens while the M&A which always leads to a low performance level. Hence, there must be a structured way of following the value creation during the deal making should be given importance. They also feel the great uncertainty which can turn out to be a great stress level for them. And that would make a cloud of perceptions and judgements by themselves. These issues create a lot of reactions including

Reverberations in family

Loss of their own talent

Lack of Information and anxiousness

And they loss their own identity.

Method

My Thesis’s data is primarily concerned on secondary data available on the internet and the e-journals available. There are a systematic observation done by me while I worked with the Dell Services and my experiences which can be co-related with the theories of the Change Management here and could be included as one of the main pillar to write the same. To prove this, I’ve selected the employees and the ex-employees who have quit the organization because or not because of the merger of Dell and Perot Systems. I’ve sent out questionnaires to a sample of around 25 people to fill out their experiences with the questions which are related to our issue which we are currently talking about. Their responses were high and the hypothesis has been supported with their responses and could be proved.

The Current Scenario:--

And to say in short about the merger, Dell was a computer manufacturer and has realised itself that it is losing its market and it also wanted to go inside a new market called as IT Services, which Perot Systems was doing it. Hence, Dell acquired Perot Systems and changed the name to DELL across the globe and made it as Dell Services over all. Dell had been now having a strategy of acquiring other companies and to list out a few are Credant Technologies, Gale Technologies, Quest Software, Wyse Technology and lot more.

According to the Bloomberg Statistics, Dell has spent more than $12.7 billion dollars on 18 acquisitions since 2009. But post all acquisitions, the revenue has fall 8.5% to %56.8 billion. Dell is also moreover planning to keep making acquisitions like a size of Gale Tech. This competitive strategy which Dell has taken is all about to compete with HP in their acquisitions. With the acquisition of Quest Softwares, Dell is now facing problems in the management structure and needs a lot to do with its rationalization which has created retention problems.

Here is the attachment of the questionnaire been sent out for survey which was in the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/QQ9HPKS

In text format:--

*

1. How long you've been working with your current company?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gif<6 months

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gif>6 months

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gif>1 year

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gif>2 years

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gif>3 years

*

2. Did you think that the merge was good, in terms of scope, exposure, opportunities, salary, etc ? If you choose yes, please specify what exactly you were looking for?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

What exactly you were looking for?

*

3. Was your salary comparatively better than the other half employee?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

4. Do you know where exactly are the current policies of the company is? If No, whom do you think has not conveyed the information?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

From where the information not told?

*

5. Are you happy to work in a merged/merging company as yours? And are you little hesitant whether you will be fired?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

If you're not happy, please specify

*

6. Do you know whether the 100% merge has happened or did the Leadership team inform about the same?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

7. Your work environment including Ergonomics seems to be treating well after this merge? Or Did you find differences in the environment

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifGood

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifBad

*

8. Are you satisfied with the job title/job description/job type given with you during/after the merge? If not, please specify

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

Other (please specify)

9. Will you recommend your friend to work with you in this company? If not, please specify

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

Other (please specify)

*

10. Were there any kind of partiality shown from the manager's/leadership team during/after this merge in your work environment?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifYes

http://www.surveymonkey.com/i/t.gifNo

Please specify, what partiality was shown

The above were the questions and we’ll see how we can do analyse from the answers or the responses which we’ve got for every question.

ANALYSIS

The data is collected from different people working in Dell Services who are the legacy perot employees and had been sent a questionnaire/survey to know about their behaviour with 10 main set of questions which I felt would be appropriate and useful for our area of study. The survey was not sent to the legacy Dell employees as the main victims discussed here are the legacy perot employees who undergo the transition and are in trouble. The data analysis from the survey is done below from the data shown and there is a statistics shown for every question. With just not only the theories and the journals available on the internet and the postings which had been quoted and discussed throughout this document, the need of a direct survey was required to hold with the evidences. The poll is taken very minute observation from the employees responses and are taken as the answers or evidences for all our theories which we discussed. The poll to all of these questions had been serving as a very important tool to decide on the factor of judging the hypothesis. Below are the responses from each of the employees and we have discussion for each of the answers as how it is related to our base theory. The screen shots are attached in the document for further reference as the designated results are available only online.

Responses--

From the above statistics, what we can see is that out of 25 people who were surveyed, and how many of them have enough experiences with the merge and acquisition, so that they well know about the work culture and behaviour happening before and now in the company. Let’s consider the maximum to be >2 years which is a considerable amount of years spent in an organization to know the company well in form of the policies and the team and the company itself. We’ve got 68% which is 17 of 25 people who are in that category, and by this we can say that the survey done is worth of quality of at least 68%, as they know in holistic manner. But there is a considerable 8% which is 2 people too who are working more than 3 years in the company, hence together it makes 76% of the people know it better in the survey. There are 20% which is 5 people more in the middle range more than a year which we may or may not take inside consideration about it. Coz, they’re in a novice stage to judge well. But, still we have to take their inputs as well.

Looking above at the 2nd question, of asking how the merge was good or did they have any problems with the terms of scope, exposure, opportunities, salary etc. This question is very critical to our research as this will decide the overall criteria of our topic of satisfaction and how they feel about the company. This question also says about their expectations before and after the merge, adding on they’ve given reasons of why the merge was not good and what they expected from it. We had got 66.7% wrong which is more than the half and nearly 3/4th of the whole population sample we’ve taken inside consideration which had said that still the company has not got merged well, despite told in the media that the merge has already done. Rest of 33.3% has mentioned about that the merge has happened, due to their lack of information or their intuition seeing the name of the brand as merged.

The above figure represents the responses saying the expectations of the employees from the company. Majority of the employees complained about the salary expectations which they were looking for and had their disappointment when asked for their opinion. Many of them were concerned about the new opportunities which they might be having after the merge, which has never happened other than the Supply Chain management which is the main core business of Dell Services Pvt. Ltd. They also have an issue, saying that despite of working in all of the multiple projects, the recognition and rewards was not much satisfactory. There was one good reason which was a commendable is the expectations of the New facilities coming inside after the merge, which has not happened as the core computer manufacturing company has gone inside the service model. So, to summarize more on this, the employees were giving high opinions about their salary, which is the main accelerator to work and the second important opinion was about the opportunity which they’ve missed it after the merge. Hereby, it clearly says that they are totally unsatisfactory and the hypothesis has been proved right.

To make a deep dive about the salary expectations from the employees, I’ve asked a question to them whether the salary provided to them were satisfactory when compared with the better half from the other organization. The responses shown above have clearly shown that they were not satisfied at all. 79.2% of the people has commented and said No which they mean that they have not got the salary which has been given to the other employee of the same post from the merged company. 20.8% of the people were satisfied where they could be at the high level of the employees holding a position in the middle level managers which might have a slight similarity in their pay scale. But, still the majority has voted that to be No which is a considerable statistics to go ahead to prove our hypothesis.

With this question, it is meant to be nice in the manner that Dell has tried saying their policies to all the employees about their new policies in effect. And 82.6% of the people have informed that they’ve got to know where the policies are kept in the portal. However, 17.4% of people who has never known working there for many months have never got a chance of knowing where the company policies are kept, which is noticeable and important.

When asked the employees to comment on asking who has not conveyed the information to the employees, there were 3 responses told that it has not reached all the core services employees who are supposed to be called as Perot System employees who are in trouble. The people who have not conveyed the message was either Manager or Team Mates. This means that the co-workers who may be a Legacy Dell employees who has not told them about the policies.

This above question was raised to know whether they have the reason of being happy in the merging company and also in a condition whether they will be fired. The employees has interpreted and told that they’re happy, but they are hesitant that they will be fired by any means. There were 73.9% of people who has raised against this question that they will be fired at any time or may be not interested in working in a merge or a merging company. While I asked about the responses from the employees as why they are hesitant to work there, they’ve commented as shown above. The first comment which we’ve received is very important and crucial for an employee, where in the standard of work given to an experienced person has to be in his/her own standards and not below or above his standards. The cost-cutting problem nowadays having was another issue which the company is now targeting to do, where in the employees who has an experience of more than 3 years were been fired of saying reasons that they didn’t attend the mandatory trainings or they’ve taken 2 sick leaves with no doctor certificates.

In a company, where they haven’t seen any firing till the history and suddenly after the merge, they’re seeing this kind of disturbances will obviously throw a big stone in the dreams of the employees and create self-awareness among them that they are the next target for the sacking. More on top of it, the sacking happens once in a quarter or a month and will be told also that when the next sacking happens and within how many months or days with the count of people too. This seems to be a real warning for the people to work in their environment. And there were firing for no reasons mentioning that the market is not go and they are in the process of sacking. When the employees were hired in the company with high package which the company has agreed to pay them, and after a while when they are fired due to the same reason that they were paid high seems to be ridiculous. As per the survey, people have told that they’re not really happy about the work which they’ve given to manage.

The quality of work which was given was for the higher grade people, and which is not supposed to be given to the people at the lower level. This means that the work which has to be done by a candidate having experience is given to a candidate who doesn’t have an experience. There by, the quality of the work is met or not, the work is done as per the rate which has been spoken to the client and the job is done apparently. The expectations kept at a starter level job employees are at a very high peak level to be done like a candidate having experience, which is not quite obvious and the candidate can never do it efficiently and independently. This kind of work always needed a support from an experienced candidate. There by, the company is targeting on the fresher out of college or a university and pay less and get the job done of an experienced person. Even after the work is not done, the performance appraisal says that they’ve not met the expectations kept by their management and hence neither rewards nor recognition to deliver projects or programs efficiently and independently.

There was another complaint raised by the employee that the work given is not consistent and hence there is not a niche skill for an employee to work on or become a Subject Matter Expert on it. The employees are made to work in an ad-hoc request and never on the basis of nurturing their knowledge on technology or domain specific. Hence, the employee also feels inferior working in a small 6 months project with a few people who are new neither to them nor to the project and hence the confusion and chaos creates among them. The other comment which has given by the employee has told clearly that they’re working with the company as if there is a gun kept on the head as the company is on a firing spree. This line makes the condition of the employee to the worse extent that they’ve hated to do the job and they’ve been considered as slaves to work all day and night. When I spoke to my good friend whom I’ve included him in the acknowledgements has texted me when asked about the survey and not ready to reveal it out has also mentioned about the ergonomics, salary and opportunities problem.

To know how much of the information has been transformed from the leadership team to the employees via the Human Resources team. We’ve spoken about this a lot in the previous Introduction as which could be the problem faced if this was not done properly from the Leadership team to the core employees of the company. So, to answer this there were 54.2% which is nearly only half of the population knew that the 100% merge has happened and the rest was not sure whether the merge has happened or not. They also informed that the leadership team has not informed about the same and the news from the higher management has not reached the employees properly. 45.2% of the people which is nearly half of the population have not known about the fact and they also knew that the information has not come from the higher management. This survey about this question is very essential in knowing whether the synch is happening between the management and the people about the merge. The above result again proves the hypothesis was right as there was no touch nor the Human Resources team has not passed the information to the employees.

The above question and the case is the new case which is happening currently in all the industries and especially with a company which outsources everything to India or China and are expecting to cut the costs really high. The company is making use of the space as the main restriction for this cause and tries to reduce a space where a cubicle workspace used to work for 2 people has been made to work for 3 people with no personal space or privacy provided to them. They were also experiencing a huge difference between the before merge and the after merge of the company as they were making use of the royalty before and not after. This kind of condition will result in the health loss of the employee by physically and as well as mentally. Ergonomics is a very important factor to be considered while working in a condition where you have to sit in a place for 8 to 10 hours per day to finish your daily tasks. This may tend to back ache, neck pain, joint pain and also dizziness due to the wrong gestures and no exercise during work. This includes the facilities also including the free transportation given by the company to the employees who work far or stay late after their work. The gifts or perks or incentives or the food coupons which is useful for the tax clearance and utile and basic for the employee has been taken off has led to a big disappointment among the employees. The opportunities which include the foreign trip in a Business travel for a short term or a long term too has been taken out of the picture which is done either by Conference call or Video Webinar to conserve the cost cutting storm.

The above statistics shows that the employees were at least happy with the job title or the job description which has been given during the merger, but the satisfaction with that kind of job type is another issue which has to be discussed. 82.6% agree that they had been given a good job title or the occupation name but on the other hand 17.4% of people disagree that they were not given a proper title for their work. This doesn’t add much points to our survey, however is useful for the evaluation of the company’s view and respect towards the employees. There was one of response from an employee for the role given that despite given role or not, there is no proper recognition for any kind of work done. The few policy changes happened after the merger that the employee of the legacy perot systems is not supposed to get a referral bonus for the referral but the employee can be considered for the interview panel and may be selected. This is not obvious and a foolish decision which the company has ever did a mistake in their history and this has made a huge profit to the outside consultancies to whom the referred candidate’s money will be given to instead of the employees. Moreover, as this is a part of the savings storm program initiated by Dell, there was huge policies change which had made a chaos among the employees and made the company the fool from the employee’s perspective.

This question was really vital in answering whether the employee is ready to refer his/her friend to work with the company and also it shows about the satisfaction limit with the company. 56.5% of the population has told NO which is more than half of the people which is quite a majority and they don’t wanted their friends or relatives to be working with this company. This also means about the condition of the work place, work culture and the benefits and opportunities being available with the company after merger. While asked for the reason why they said NO, there were 3 responses coming in voluntarily which one said about that the growth opportunities are less and there is no good team work present inside the company. When two companies merge and there is a topsy-turvy Dom happening inside the company, the opportunities which were available wouldn’t be any more available to the employees, or the new opportunities would have been cancelled or rejected due to the cost savings. We have already discussed about the synchronization between the employees of both the sides as how would one react with the other when there are new bees joining in their team either to take away their job of feel partiality inferior with others. Even this reason they’ve highlighted importantly that there is no expected team work happening due to this non-synchronization. The second worry for them was the opportunities which has been mentioned that the employees start looking for a better job and a work place outside the company and they believe that the opportunities are missed from their side and the company side too when there is a prospective client who wants to do business with this merged company would go for a better company having not merged. The differences in the pay scale before and after the merge have also seem to be very vital for them to work, as that being the main tonic to keep them energetic to work.

The essential question in the survey which is shown above is critical to know the organizational or company’s behaviour towards the employees of the acquired company or the acquiring company. Hence, the above question was asked whether there were any kind of partiality shown from the manager’s side or from the leadership team to the employees of the acquired or acquiring company during or after the merge, and people responses are shown above. 56.5% of the people have votes Yes stating that there is a partiality shown which could be very dangerous for a branded company like Dell must not have this issue running among their employees. Somehow, this partiality attitude has not come down from the leadership team nor the manager’s to the employees and has spread to all. And this would create an inferiority complex to the acquired company employees and a superiority complex to the acquiring company employees. This more than half of the people who has said YES has their reasons and thus we can prove that every merger has this change in the behaviour which can lose their business and may lead up to the result in closing of the company with big losses.

One of the comments says that the lead who leads the project and who is supposed to be your manager is expected to show you the way to run that project. But there is a partiality in this too and the lead may or does not show any interests if the project is yours and but still belongs to him/her. Instead he/she shows interests to other projects which he/she is not a part of wants to help the sub-ordinates well and give them exposure and who are of the same community people whore are the same company people. There is also another perception from the Manager’s point of view that the other company’s employees who are the acquired company’s employees are low skilled and are in capable of working and are less productive when compared with the acquiring company employees. And to top of this, there are various untold partialities shown which are quite natural and subjunctive to the situations happening every day at the work place including giving good rating to the same company folks and not to the other company folks. The main responsibilities shared to the sub-ordinates will be given in such a way that always the acquired company employees work below an acquiring company employee which is the main complex which it creates among the employees. And when employees of same level of experience, same level of job and same type of job given but the pay is different, this is quite obvious for an employee to rise ahead for change in his career to be working somewhere else to work for better money.

Results

All these above findings, gives us a very good picture of how the employees react negatively when the company merges or after merging and almost all the answers are favourable to the theory which we’ve proved above with the evidences shown in the survey. From all the questions where we asked about their experiences and their problems related to merging, they’d always had a problem and were all to do more with the HR team and the Leadership team too.

To prove more by the theory, Tower Watson report has given more significance to the integration of the role of Human Resources manager in all the Mergers and Acquisition activities. This report shows that there is more intense involvement of the human resource team which has resulted in a more better way of using the potential opportunities available and managing the risks in a better way and this research has eventually lead towards the evolution of five important factors which can make a great deal of success. And this has to be followed to make the deal a success in any kind of merger, regardless of the same culture or from different culture companies.

Performance of the human resource- the performance of the human resource team with conscientiousness about reasonable care taken by a particular person without harming other people and the successful completion of the task or deal are interdependent with each other.

Due Diligence in a better way during this phase, all financial aspects or effects of risks related to employees must be addressed in a more reliable and timely manner. Alignment of different cultures, the major differences between a less successful trade and a very successful trade can be brought out by the efficient alliance of different cultures concentration on different factors of success. The key factors such as Key talents of Employees’ retention, Workforce deployment, Change management and Alignment of leadership willingness will lead to success. For Merger and Acquisition, this factor indicates that the human resource team should enhance the Merger and Acquisition readiness so that there is effective conversion.

The above figure is the result of research conducted by the Tower Watsons, According to them, the above figure shows that the constant involvement of the human resources team at all stages of the Merger and Acquisition has led to successful trades, whether it was with respect to evaluation of goals, implementation or due diligence. However the studies have shown that there is plenty of room for improving the due diligence phase, since many risks related to employees have not been reported while going through financial analysis. Wherein, the due diligence success percentage has to be at least 90%. And to do with the main criteria, the target evaluation percentage is just 22% which is very basic before making a deal. While the Integration Implementation is high at 71%, this shows clearly the dedication of the Human Resource team in implementing the process change in the organization during a merge. There are less successful deals also which has been shown in the picture.

The reason for this case is because of the fact that the risks involved with the employee related issues are not easy to measure and not imaginable too.

For example: let us consider wrong alliance of different cultures, whose nature is subjective, and difficult to measure, hence during the negotiations in pre-acquisition stage it is usually out of picture. Other than Finance, the human resources team should also guide the work during due diligence stage.

As mentioned earlier in the example i.e., the wrong alliance of different cultures is the usual reason to why many of the great trades wouldn’t run or would have failed. Suppose there is alliance between two enterprises which have different work practices, differences in the environment in which they work, different level of management teams, their values, vision and mission, this usually leads to the clashes between enterprises involved in alliance.

One of the great consulting firms i.e. Towers Watson have provided a method which is a web based function for aligning different cultures, that function is named as -Towers Watson's Culture Alignment Tool (CAT). This Tool has been used to evaluate the effective form of culture with different enterprises by gathering information from the management team in a ranking order about different attributes of culture that describes their own organization in a better way. Once the culture which already exists within the buying organization has been clearly formulated and expressed, then it can be used to implement the key factors that have to be talked over during the standard due diligence operation. This suggests for a better understanding of future needs from cultural point of view of the targeted company and an effective aligning procedure for potential goals or challenges. It provides better way of articulating an action plan to concentrate on gaps between cultures and makes possible for the shift to take place consistently.

Another key factor of Merger and Acquisition is the ability to remember the key talents which is crucial for helping to develop a strong business plan. However, remembering the right employees is way more important than the retention itself. In a newly combined enterprise if the personal values and the purpose of an employee do not match with the requirements, the best option would be to let go of that employee and to hire an employee who aligns with the required position.

CONCLUSION:--

Since, now the human resource managers have got some scope as the managers who bring out different changes during Merger and Acquisition, it is very crucial that the changes brought into existence should be as effective as possible. In the process of achieving this, it is necessary for the human resources team to update its code of conduct which is used to address the merger and acquisition operations which is present universally, so it might have shortage of proper methods to overcome a new series of challenges.