Meeting of Minds of Senior Management on Both Sides Is Key to Merger Success

A study of the history of mergers and acquisitions offers a broad spectrum of lessons that should be learnt, so as to ensure that such deals are successful. Be it the first wave of consolidation that occurred in the US and Europe in the 1890s or the post globalisation conglomerate behemoths that are a result of the recent wave of mergers; a key component in the success of these operations is strategic human resources planning.

- Ajay Bharadwaj

The three pillars on which any post-merger successful strategic HR plan must be based are – setting out the HR objectives that the new entity wishes to achieve, a HR strategy and detailed plan on how to achieve it, along with a timeline and lastly, HR performance metrics to mark the progress of the implementation of the agreed upon plan. This sounds almost too simple but as HR involves people and very often different or even conflicting corporate cultures of the two merging entities, it is often fraught with hurdles, which always vary on a case to case basis. In addition to these pitfalls, the biotech and healthcare industries provide their own set of unique challenges.