Use Company Team Building Activities to Build Culture After Mergers & Acquisitions
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Company team building activities can be critically important especially after a merger or acquisition. As anyone who has lived through them can tell you, mergers and acquisitions can be an all-consuming and draining experience. More importantly, most of them fail to achieve the desired goal: to make stockholders or owners better off after the event. For example, a KPMG study found that 83 percent of mergers and acquisitions did not boost shareholder returns. A.T. Kearney reached the same assessment, determining that total returns on M&A were on the whole negative. Could company team building activities be the right tool to handle culture and workplace integration after a merger?
So what goes wrong with mergers and acquisitions? According to the experts, usually one of two things. First, the financial engineering is overwrought and the resulting entity is heaped with debt or fees that force it to change the way it operates. Second, amidst all the financial hardball, not enough attention is paid to the “softer” issues of employee morale, culture and workplace integration. These may sound “touchy-feely” to some, but the hard costs of not getting this right are considerable. When people start wasting time because they are looking for another job, or losing focus because they are not sure where they fit in, labor becomes relatively expensive and productivity suffers. Worse, customer service or product quality can degrade.
Uncertainty begets anxiety. Anxious employees don’t collaborate or perform well.
How can merged or acquired firms retain the positive aspects of an employee environment that made them successful in the first place? One answer is company team building activities, which have been shown to help integrate company cultures, increase familiarity and ease tensions and anxieties.
Company Team Building Opportunities for Mergers & Acquisitions
Why is team building so important for newly merged or acquired companies? Team building is an investment in your employees that signals you care about their future within the company. It’s also a great way to integrate diverse company cultures and break down the “us versus them” mentality that often predominates on both sides of a merged or acquired company. It helps create the impression that people are working for an evolving or successor company, not a completely different one.
At Team Building with Taste, we offer unique culinary team building programs, which build upon the comfort and familiarity of a kitchen combined with an interactive experience designed to bring people together to work as a team. The programs are modeled after reality TV show cooking competitions such as Chopped and Iron Chef.
For merged or acquired companies, we strongly urge executives to participate in the company team building activities. There is nothing like chopping onions next to someone while the clock is running down to build familiarity and trust. Or, as a team, figuring out how to incorporate dragon fruit into that chicken recipe. As team members face these challenges, they’re encouraged to take creative risks, which may or may not pay off. Nonetheless, the ensuing discussions and creativity create a bond between employees (and managers) that lasts long after the event.
One of the highlights of the competition occurs after the cooking is done when each team must present their “judges plate” to the audience. Participants are encouraged to share their culinary creation in a memorable way. Some of our favorite team presentations have included impromptu songs, foreign accents, fake ventriloquists and a portrayal of the Swedish Chef from The Muppets. By putting themselves “out there” in front of their peers, participants signal a willingness to cooperate and share their more creative or emotional sides. When managers join in the company team building activities, the benefits are magnified, and the barriers are broken down much faster.
Is culinary team building the silver bullet for soothing workplace anxieties after a merger or acquisition? Of course not. Can it help employees feel more secure in their roles, and more likely to feel valued and rely on one another back in the office? Absolutely! They are much more likely to feel they are working for an evolving or successor company, not a new and different one.
Book Your Team Building Event in Atlanta
Are you ready to achieve success after your company’s merger or acquisition? Team Building with Taste is proud to offer company team building activities in our location in Atlanta.
Book your team building event online with Team Building with Taste today.