Author: Tenet Admin

Unfortunately, mergers aren’t always successful. Some fail because one company overestimates the worth of the other—and overpays. Other times, failure can be linked to a lack of synergy in services, products, resources or markets. But history—and a recent KPMG study reveal that cultural misalignment among other issues put the failure rate of mergers at 83%. And it’s culture that drives employee behavior. Before the merger papers are signed, here are five tips to help you make sure your acquisition will be smoothly integrated into your business.

1. Assess the cultural gaps

The acquiring firm should compare and contrasts its own cultural behaviors with the acquired firm to determine what they share and what’s different. Is the management command and control, or more democratic? Is one company staffed with long-tenured employees and the other with Millenials? Performance reviews, employee on-boarding practices, and internal communications are just some of the processes that should be evaluated and compared side-by-side. This will reveal insights where the greatest degree of changes may be required.

2. Identify the strengths and values of the acquired brand

Companies with well-defined brands may have strong values built on a legacy of service and production. It’s important to evaluate the strength of the established brand and consider how to keep any valuable and unique equities that characterize their culture.

3. Create a realistic timeline for the integration process

Integrating an acquisition into your organization requires a timeline that takes into account the unique cultures of both companies. The initial assessment will tell you the areas to go slow or speed up. Identify key milestones such as a stabilized workforce and when HR platforms are fully incorporated. Play out different scenarios for change before you start the process. The benefits of doing so means you’ll have a smoother period of transition if you know where you’re headed.

4. Chart the specific areas for cultural and operational transition

Acquiring a company takes more than just assuming another business. There are operational issues in factories, systems in HR, communication brand standards and employees to consider. Assign teams to manage different areas that can coordinate what needs to be done across organization. Create a cross-functional “merger” team with representatives from both companies to have a “two-way” view of the process.

5. Build a communication strategy to keep everyone informed

Change produces anxiety. Lack of information prompts rumor. As a central element of an acquisition process, build a communication strategy that informs and engages all stakeholders from both acquirer and the acquired organization during the transition process. Go beyond Town Hall and occasional newsletters. Consider two-way feedback between both sides of the acquisition through internal online forums and workshops.

More and more, research is showing that the traditional annual review process is clunky, time consuming, and failing to deliver the results employees, managers and organizations need. But, review data is vital for assessing role competencies and for understanding talent development needs. That’s why many HR teams are redefining their employee review processes through new technology. These five tips can help you make the most of technology to enhance your employee review process.

1. Drive accessibility through technology to enable 360° peer reviews

When building a brand-aligned employee review process, it’s vital that all employees be able to give and receive feedback to ensure non-biased and fair reviews. However, some employees on the factory floor or working out of an office may not have computer access. An easily accessible, web-app review tool can enable 360-degree feedback from all employees. It can drive engagement and deliver valuable data about how well employees are living your brand.

2. Align your employee reviews to desired brand-focused behaviors

When creating a new employee review process, technology can help you to measure brand-focused goals such as brand personality attributes or brand service principles. The key is creating a metric that makes it easy for managers and peers to assess employees against brand behaviors, which are pivotal to keeping the brand promise that you make to your customers.

3. Keep technology simple to capture valuable data

An easy-to-use, dynamic interface is key when adopting new technology. If it’s helpful, people will use it. Create a simple, portable tool that allows employees to provide real-time feedback about their peers who are living brand behaviors and you will collect valuable review data. With so much of what employees do in the workplace now online, the ability to record how employees perform is easier than ever. The more data you have, the more you can inform training, development, recognition and hiring needs all aligned to your brand strategy.

4. Technology is only part of the process

Peer review technology enlightens the wider review process; it is not the only source of information. The data makes it easy to have frequent and periodic two-way conversations between managers and employees to discuss the performance and development needs of each person.

5. Technology is just a tool

Technology doesn’t drive brand engagement; brand engagement drives the use of employee review technology. Technology is a useful tool to collect information for employee reviews and for employees themselves to see their part in the review process. New technology can enhance how employees work, but if it is not aligned to organizational goals, it will be useless. Using data to inform effective development conversations is the key to getting the most from your technology.

Finding candidates is tough. Finding the right candidates can be even tougher. But, recruiting the best candidates is key for growing your business successfully. Getting the best people in the door means using your organization’s external brand to identify the prospects that can best execute that strategy. To find the right employees for your business, take a more brand-aligned approach to recruitment. These five tips can help you attract the best candidates to your organization:

1. Create brand consistency across recruitment outlets

When a candidate searches for a job on your internal recruitment pages, LinkedIn, Career Builder, or Glassdoor, they get an impression of your company and that impression influences whether candidates will apply.

Many websites offer standard templates that make it easy to adopt their format. Be careful – following their templates means you lose an opportunity to create a consistent brand message across all channels. Using your own template gives you better control of the recruitment process to find the best-fit employees for your business. Write your job description headline in the same unique brand voice as all your marketing communications.

2. Differentiate your company from competitors

Your brand is how your customers differentiate your product or service from your competitors. Unfortunately, many companies use boilerplate text in a recruitment ad that’s not appealing to applicants. To get the best candidates for your roles, communicate the key differences of your product or service throughout all parts of the recruitment process. Including, when messaging to internal and external candidates, during the complete interview procedure, and when making final offers to candidates.

3. Use language to entice and engage

To engage applicants, you need to use engaging language. If applicants feel as though you have invested little time in recruiting them, they are likely to be the kind of people who will invest little time in your company. By describing your company’s mission, vision and values so that people know who you are and what you stand for – and by spending time explaining the position in honest terms – applicants gain real insight into the open position. This way, you get applicants who are prepared for what’s the job offer and who are passionate about your brand.

4. Make templates easy to implement by your entire HR team

Needs change, roles change, and so do your HR employees who create the recruitment ads. Using a template that describes the basic recruitment details aligned to your company’s brand ensures uniformity across the recruitment process. As a result, you will receive a consistent caliber of applicants across your organization.

5. After recruiting, drive your brand across your HR practices

Once you have people in the door, it’s easy to think they will settle into your culture because you’ve spent the time to find the right fit. However, if you don’t continue the ‘on brand’ experience, people will quickly feel the recruitment messages they received were misleading and they will not understand how to deliver your brand promise. Drive your brand through onboarding, recognition and reward, and ongoing development to keep employees engaged and aligned to your organizational goals.

A brand is much more than a name for a company, a product or service. The power of a brand runs much deeper. A brand holds with it an expectation of service, product type, product variety, reliability, fun or loyalty. It should be a total experience, driven by a set of values that are aligned to your business strategy and demonstrated daily by your employees.

Before you can expect employees to live your brand, they need to understand what makes a brand unique. These five tips can help you to drive your business strategy by educating employees on your brand:

1. Help employees to understand branding

Many people don’t understand how branding works; but as consumers, we are all used to branding when we make purchase decisions. Your goal is to move employees from having general knowledge of branding as members of a consumer society through to seeing your brand as an organizational asset. Ultimately, they will learn how their roles as employees can be aligned to their brand.

2. Drive the importance of brand positioning

Making your product or service stand out from the competition is paramount if you want to stay in business. Work with your employees to understand what makes your offering different and how they can contribute to that differentiation to help your brand stand out from the crowd. Being successfully differentiated is how to best utilize your blend of employees, products, and culture. Involving employees in defining and shaping your brand also helps to drive employee brand engagement; a key factor in business success.

3. Explore your brand promise

How employees interact with your customers and with each other is integral to your business success. Do your employees also live the promises you make to your consumers? Do they fulfill those promises with every consumer interaction and fellow employee? Educating employees about your brand promise helps them to understand what behaviors they need to display to drive that promised experience to your customers.

Branding isn’t always about big, flashy advertising campaigns. It’s about creating differentiation from your competitors. Every company has a brand. Whether or not you choose to manage your brand, however, can be the difference between success and failure in business.

4. The right brand education can make or break your brand promise

Educating employees on the behaviors needed to live your brand promise is one thing, but using education to change behavior requires creativity. Individualizing training through personalizing your brand for employees and preparing trainers with the right tools to make the most impact for all types of learners helps make new behaviors stick. For example, you can train employees by asking them to apply the brand behaviors to realistic scenarios based on everyday work experiences. Starbucks created a major facility and exhibit to physically immerse managers and employees in the brand experience.

5. Reinforce and instill employee brand behaviors

Reinforcing desired brand behaviors is fundamental to lasting success of employees living the brand. Give people opportunities to practice and be measured on their ability to use their new skills in the real world. Consider initiatives like peer reviews of brand-aligned behavior. Branded recruitment and onboarding programs can also help embed new behaviors for the longer term.

Organizations make major investments to recruit, train, motivate and retain an exceptional workforce. That’s important because according to The Public Affairs Pulse survey, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, one-third of Americans form their view of a company’s brand based on their interactions with the company’s employees. That means employee’s attitudes and performance can impact a purchasing decision, which can affect a company’s stock price.

If you’re a publicly traded company, here are five tips to consider when calculating the return on your investment in your human capital:

1. Pay close attention to employees’ evaluations of managers and leaders

Managers wield huge influence in employees’ job satisfaction. An inspiring and supportive manager can drive employee performance, while a punitive, callous boss creates ill will and attrition, which can be costly in terms of recruiting a replacement. Give employees the freedom to evaluate their managers openly and anonymously to identify who your company’s heroes really are.

2. Make sure customer satisfaction surveys align with employee performance reports

When customer satisfaction surveys are excellent, it’s likely that employee performance reports will concur. But sometimes customers may complain about employee service and employee performance reports give an entirely different picture. Check to see both sides of the story to get a balanced view of what’s really going on.

3. Ask employees what kind of benefits they really want

Employee benefits such as health insurance and paid sick leave may be standard, but many employers offer other options including variable work hours, job sharing, and childcare allowances. Asking the majority of employees the kind of benefits they want may help manage benefit budgets by eliminating unwanted options.

4. Look for the hidden reasons people are leaving

Employees may be embarrassed or too angry to offer useful information during an exit interview. It’s important to follow up after an employee leaves to get clarity that can provide future guidance. Look for common issues when employees under the same manager quit. Consider personal issues such as workplace bullying or harassment.

5. Discount Social Media comments and reviews

Social media sites such as Twitter, Glassdoor and Indeed offer employees and customers opportunities to praise or complain about experiences with companies. While this new access to commentary can be enlightening, be wary. Research reveals that people who post on sites represent the extremes of positive and negative. Rarely do those who make up the greater happy middle take the time to post.

Recognizing and rewarding your employees for demonstrating desired brand behaviors breeds a culture in which employees feel nurtured and inspired to act on-brand.

To truly make your brand a part of your company’s culture, you have to make it personal for your employees. That means translating your brand strategy to manifest in their everyday actions. Recognizing and rewarding the success of their actions is paramount to creating a loyal and inspired workforce.

So while you may be both recognizing and rewarding your employees, ask yourself: Are you managing your program in a way that supports your overall business strategy and conveys your company’s brand values? To create a recognition and rewards program that will reinforce your brand and support your business strategy, here are our five tips.

1. Define on-brand behavior

Many organizations reward their employees, but are they prompting the brand-focused behaviors in the right way? To drive on-brand behavior, you must create “real-life” brand definitions that are relevant and meaningful to all employees. Creating actionable brand definitions helps employees see how being brand-conscious can be done. It helps them understand how putting thoughts into actions will create lasting brand impressions on customers or other key constituencies. It provides evidence of how business processes and the culture of the company communicate brand messages even if there isn’t face-to-face contact with customers.

2. Recognize first, then reward

Rewards programs help reinforce behaviors, but recognizing employees can be even more valuable. Recognition is something employees have earned that can never be taken from them. A simple verbal thank you, a genuine hand written note, or a visit with a senior leader are invaluable forms of recognition. Reinforcing on-brand behaviors through appropriate reward ensures employees will be motivated. Successful reward programs could include a special parking space nearer the office. Or allowing an employee to share the story behind the reason for recognition at a company Lunch and Learn.

3. Model winning behaviors through brand ambassadors

Employees who receive frequent recognition and reward are your true brand ambassadors. These people naturally model the on-brand behaviors to those around them. Leverage those exemplary employees by using their approaches to inform and support recruitment, onboarding and training programs.

4. Enable any employee to recognize on-brand behavior

Recognition for a job well done or demonstrating brand behaviors can come from anywhere: a manager, a leader, a customer or a peer. When an employee recognizes brand behavior, it’s really a two-way street: the “recognizer” must be familiar enough with the behavior to see it in a co-worker. When employees receive recognition from a variety of sources, it is likely to reinforce them to continue the behavior in the future.

5. Find out who in your organization is going unrecognized

Employees who don’t ever receive recognition are worthy of your attention, too. Find out the reason why some people are going unrecognized. Whether it’s their lack of understanding about the brand, infrequent education or even personal issues, it’s important to find out if it’s something about the individual employee or a sign of wider organizational issues.

When employees are engaged they want to go the extra mile for their organization. It occurs when employees feel a sense of connectedness, belonging to, and responsibility for an organization’s success. They care about the organization’s future and the future of those within it.

To engage employees, a deeper understanding of human nature is needed. These five tips can help you bring inspiration and drive to your workforce:

1. Inspire to engage

Helping your employees to understand why they do the work they do and the value that it adds to your organization’s goals, will help them to feel more connected to your company and more motivated to achieve for its growth. However, creating ‘the why’ needs to be done in a meaningful and heartfelt way and not focused on financial gain for the company. An employee wants to feel they are making a difference, not simply making your dollars.

2. Appreciate people to get more than their baseline

Often managers think that because someone is paid for their work, they do not need extra recognition. Unfortunately, by taking that approach, you will only get the basic work requirements from your employee. However, if an employee feels appreciated for the work they do, and they see that are making a difference; they will be driven to reach new heights. When you recognize your employees for their efforts, be sure to that you recognize them for the things you want them to repeat. If you want to see your employees engage in more teamwork, don’t reward them for meeting individual targets. Creating a peer-to-peer feedback and reward mechanism that encourages employees to learn about their peer’s work to be in line for recognition is one way to achieve this.

3. Make diversity a reality

People from different backgrounds, cultures and countries think differently. I’ve known this in theory throughout my career, but only when I moved to a new country did I realize the real difference cultural factors make in decision-making. Diverse teams allow people to learn from each other’s varied backgrounds to create solutions that excite and engage those working on them and produce increased revenue for your organization.

4. Create a mobile workforce

Giving employees the opportunity to visit different parts of the business helps them to build new networks, learn new ways of working and it sparks innovative ideas. Mobility also helps employees to feel more valued because they feel invested in and, therefore, integral to the organization’s success.

5. Build communities

Communities of employees with shared interests and goals, encourages collaboration on projects even when people are dispersed globally or functionally. Examples include Google Hangouts, Slack, Facebook and other social networking tools. They also create awareness of product, processes or services that work well elsewhere in the business. Communities help people to connect the dots in their organizations so that they gain a deeper understanding of where they fit and where they can add a new perspective.

Transformation is a long journey made up of a series of sprints, and at larger organizations it can take years for momentum to kick in. Picture a large shipping freighter changing direction. You know that you have momentum and that success is on the horizon when your team or department goes outsider status to finally having more work than it can handle, a seat at the table.

Digital transformation brings digital products and platforms front and center in helping to achieve business goals with a focus on marketing activities and improving overall customer experience. From digital marketing, mobile apps, websites, and analytics, digital experiences are more important than ever when looking to acquire and retain customers. People, process and product are three commonly used terms to describe a transformation journey and should be key elements of your digital strategy. However, two other elements should also be included: data and adaptability.

Here are five tips to enable digital transformation at your organization, with a focus on people first.

1. Showcase a vision of what the future holds

The first and most important step is to create a digital strategy that showcases the outcome of the transformation, a vision of what the future holds. Then tell your story – share your vision. Buy-in from the top-down is required, starting with the CEO, the CMO, and CTO all need to fully support the vision. With a strong vision, teams will get excited about the journey and know what they are working so hard for and trying to achieve. Setting up a strategy that allows for quick wins and momentum is necessary. Think stages within a race. Celebrate the wins.

2. Foster collaboration and nurture talent

You need to have the support to create winning teams that execute and deliver. Take the time to develop your future leaders, hire for new skillsets ad perspectives, and when needed, have the tough conversations with those who cannot adapt.

Collaboration is vital for transformation success. Expand partnerships and remove silos where possible; the more teams across the organization buy into and support the digital strategy, the greater the likelihood of success. IT and business teams need to become one team focused on the same goals and be held to same metrics of success.

3. Establish processes and adapt quickly to change

A significant part of transformation involves process change. All of the following questions must be asked and solutions put into place, but it requires people and teams to change, to grow, to try new things, to fail, and ultimately learn what works best within an organization. Technology is constantly evolving and changing the way we complete tasks, communicate, and live. In order to take full advantage of the opportunities that these technologies and process changes offer, companies need to be adaptable and implement the right process in advance to achieve its goals.

• What are the largest customer pain points?
• Are there effective ways to capture feedback and insights?
• How are projects tracked, prioritized, and by whom?
• What technology foundational work is required before adding additional functionality?
• How are the digital projects delivered?
• How can delivery become more efficient within the constraints of your organization?
• How can you create a culture of innovation?
• Are you prepared to fail, to iterate, and to learn?

4. Collect and analyze data at the beginning, middle, and end

Collecting and analyzing data is imperative to the entire transformation journey from beginning to end and helps to hold teams accountable and measure success.

By creating customer panels and platforms for feedback loops, you can ensure that the voice of the customer is heard and their input ultimately drives your product roadmap. As roadmaps are agreed upon, KPIs need to be determined. What are the measurable metrics that will be used to determine the success of the project? Is the project phased into based on the hitting of KPIs? This is one of the largest areas of opportunity in many large companies. Too often, projects are fully developed, instead of piloting ideas and iterating towards success. Results are not tracked, or delivery is the only measurable goal. Continuous tracking of KPIs to confirm the benefits of the project and regular reporting will help to drive future opportunities.

5. Leverage digital experiences to engage and delight

Digital products and services now offer endless possibilities to engage with and to delight customers. “Meet customers where they are” and “mobile first” are now commonly used to describe the digital experience. However, using analytics and creativity to personalize the experience, you can take these approaches to the next level – meeting the “right” customers “wherever” they are and at the “correct” time. This is how you differentiate yourself and win over the most important people in the transformation – your customers.

Many of our clients are achieving great success using a customer experience focus and related frameworks to drive innovation, strengthen their brands and even recast their strategy. Placing customer experience at the center creates a new perspective that generates results.

1. Yields insights with big impact

Research on the customer experience can uncover issues and opportunities not identified through traditional customer satisfaction research. Using the highly effective tool of journey mapping, an organization can better identify how best to connect with its various customers at different stages of interaction. By looking at the entire customer journey, marketers get a more comprehensive view of their value delivery and can gain new insights about the individual moments of truth that define customer perceptions. Mapping the journey can also reveal inconsistencies across touchpoints that may limit customer delight. With this perspective, marketers can prioritize with confidence, devoting resources where they’re likely to have the biggest impact, either by addressing shortcomings or seizing new opportunities to foster customer loyalty.

2. Challenges the status quo

The customer experience framework revolves around customers and their experiences with the brand. It’s an outside-in approach that leverages external inputs to generate solutions based on customer needs and preferences, rather than on the company’s organizational structure or other internal factors. The mindset shift is liberating, especially for businesses in markets with high barriers to entry in which companies typically think in terms of their internal capabilities. This exploratory approach can help incumbents preempt market disruption through a more informed, customer-centric approach to product and service design.

3. Fosters cross-functional collaboration

Many companies are challenged by siloed thinking. Getting operations people to think like marketers (and vice-versa) may be an uphill battle. However, all departments impact the customer experience directly or indirectly, and have a role to play in enabling a best-in-class customer experience. The customer-focused approach is inherently collaborative, bringing cross-functional talent and perspectives together to drive systems thinking and build esprit de corps that transcends any one department’s turf. Shared goals and ownership can yield transformative innovation and results.

4. Enables the CMO to drive enterprise-wide change

With so many different factors and departments impacting the customer experience, cross-functional cooperation and execution is required for implementation. This dynamic gives CMOs broader license to manage enterprise-wide change initiatives and get leadership support to drive change through to completion.

5. Builds a sustainably customer-focused culture

The customer experience framework is inclusive and intuitive. That makes it easy for employees throughout the organization to “hear” and accept the voice of the customer, and allows the development of service principles that provide clear guidance for employee behaviors. The organization can then incorporate these service principles into its brand activation and employee engagement programs, empowering employees to provide experiences that pay off the brand promise.

There certainly has been no shortage of M&A activity in the press throughout the course of the year with two significant ones taking place just this past week – AB InBev NV and SABMiller PLC and Dell and EMC.

Over the past years numerous client experiences have shown me the significant role that a re-branding program can have in the success of a merger or acquisition. This was demonstrated to me again this year by the recent brand innovation program Tenet Partners led with the executive team of two merging companies in the healthcare business services arena, Connolly/iHealth Technologies.

Reflecting on the lessons from this successful program (see Connolly iHealth Technologies partners with Tenet to rebrand the company as Cotiviti) and past engagements, I thought I’d share with you five tenets you may want to consider if and when your company is involved in a merger, or transformative acquisition.

1. The brand(s) that emerges embodies your combined future

Always be clear that your goal is to create a brand positioning, value propositions, signature experiences and identity elements that capture what is unique and compelling about your combined capabilities going forward. In concert these branding components will signal your future trajectory to both customers and prospects, as well as to employees, the investment community and other stakeholders and influencers. This is why a future view of market opportunities and close alignment with the business strategy of your combined company are so crucial in developing your brand strategy and its creative expressions.

2. Respect and understand the legacies of the combining brands, your bankers won’t

Unless running counter to type, your M&A advisors will not generally place much weight on the loyalties built around the legacy brand/brands among customers, employees, suppliers and other stakeholders, but your executive leadership must. First, understanding equities of the combining brands among their constituencies is a crucial source of insights on the credible strengths and defensible differentiators that must underpin the future positioning of the merged company. Second, gauging the strength and nature of these equities and audience loyalties provides the knowledge needed to craft targeted messaging and activities to affect the transfer of loyalties from the legacy brand(s) to the new brand.

3. The rebranding process is a valuable integration mechanism

One of the greatest challenges of mergers, one that often determines success or failure, is management’s ability to integrate the organizations quickly around shared vision, values and strategies. A correctly executed branding process, whether conducted before or after merger, can be a very helpful integrative tool for the executive team and broader organization. With an objective view provided by research across internal and external constituencies and markets, management ––through teamwork exercises ––can assess opportunities and strategic positioning options in the context of newly combined competencies; reaching consensus on the best value proposition(s). As part of the integrative process, employees across the organizations are queried, engaged, informed and trained in a coordinated and unifying manner. Especially today in an environment that demands continuity of customer experience across physical and virtual channels, the branding process must reach across and engage all functions to ensure a promise made can and will be delivered.

4. It is ….a rare opportunity to shift perceptions; don’t waste it

The launch of a new brand is a unique and fleeting moment of focus when the eyes, ears and minds of a company’s stakeholders and influencers are open, curious and eager to learn what’s new. A new brand by its nature signals change. Work hard to make it positive and exciting by identifying and conveying the benefits the new brand will deliver to each key constituency and by avoiding rude, unwelcome surprises. It is a moment to plant new associations and expectations in people’s minds, and perhaps remove other ones. Of course, it is also a time to reinforce continuity of valued benefits already delivered. Make the most of it!

5. The brand protects value at risk

A brand is a financial as well as a marketing asset, and the legacy brand(s) had real, measureable economic value in the businesses before the transaction. The brand that replaces must, at a minimum, achieve the same salience, relevance and monetary contribution as the legacy brand(s) to protect business value. More broadly though, because the new brand embodies and conveys the combined businesses and the underlying strategic rationale of the transaction, its success helps protect the total economic value of the business at risk.