DIA 2017 Annual Meeting

Component Type: Session
Level: Intermediate

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are increasingly common in our industry. Managers gaining new employees and employees entering new structures and systems - and often entirely new workplace cultures - may struggle to adapt, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Even with careful planning and thoughtful communication, stress and anxiety levels can remain high in the period of time before and after the event. In this session, we will discuss the factors that impact emotional well-being in an M&A, from both the manager’s and the employee’s perspectives. We will walk through two M&A scenarios in which the manager or the employee has become disenchanted or disengaged, and we will discuss ways in which to ‘hit the reset button’ in order to mitigate the harm. Participants will engage in role play, and will be given a guide to healthy M&A communication to take back to their workplace.

Learning Objectives

Describe how a mergerand acquisition can impact both a manager’s and an employee’s emotional well-being; Develop a communication plan to reduce levels of stress and anxiety; Recognize when the level of anxiety is high, and employ corrective action to mitigate that anxiety.

Chair

Margaret S. Richards, PhD, MPH