by Arden Brion

It's no secret that consolidations among healthcare providers are expected to jump substantially in the next few years. This will create organizational and productivity challenges for leadership and workforces involved.

It's also no secret that leaders of companies in consolidation frequently focus more on the strategic, operational and cultural components of an acquisition and less on the stress and trauma employees experience.

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M&A literature is filled with stories of employees who experience stress, become demoralized, and operate out of fear. They often become more competitive with colleagues and refuse to take actions or make decisions that involve risks. Our experience at Root Learning in working with healthcare and other clients supports the idea that employee engagement drops significantly when employees are overwhelmed, scared, don't understand the issues and don't see the big picture.

However, while it seems natural to assume that mergers and acquisitions will negatively affect employee engagement, findings from the Kenexa Research Institute suggest that may not always be true. In some cases, employee engagement can actually soar!

Konexa looked at drivers of employee engagement and characteristics of employee-centric leaders, and here is what they found:

1. Engagement of workers whose companies have merged with or been acquired by another company doesn’t automatically decline. But when layoffs are involved, the impact is usually negative.

2. Engagement areas that suffer the most include:

• Belief in the organization's future and its leaders
• Trust that employees have a promising future with the company
• Knowledge that the company will offer more higher-quality products and services than its competitors

3. Declines in confidence can be offset by employee-centric senior managers who take the time to be visible to employees and clearly explain the company's future direction.

4. When senior leaders credibly display concern for the welfare and morale of the workforce, employee engagement levels can actually rise dramatically. It boils down to leadership and the value that senior managers place on human assets.

We can attest to the impact of focusing on the human side based on what leaders of Beaumont Hospitals demonstrated in the acquisition of a new hospital. Beaumont worked with Root Learning to create a suite of learning modules that explained the details of its movement to think and act like a system--its integration of three hospitals under a "OneBeaumont" entity--including the reasons for it and how teams and individuals could help support it. The learning sessions were so successful that they were later added to the onboarding experience for all new Beaumont employees.

Given both the Konexa findings and the positive outcome for M&As like Beaumont, healthcare leaders who want to keep employee engagement high during M&A activities should have no doubts about the positive impact on employee engagement and organizational performance that results from focusing on the human side of acquisitions and change.

Arden Brion is managing director of the healthcare practice at Root Learning, a global leader in strategic consulting that has helped more than 500 organizations worldwide solve meaningful business problems where people are the critical lever to success. Arden specializes in assisting healthcare executives communicate and execute strategy, as well as engage their workforce in strategic thinking and execution, representing clients such as Adventist Healthcare, Avera McKennan Hospital and University Health Center, Cleveland Clinic and many more. Email him at abrion@rootlearning.com