With businesses paying more attention to the importance of people aspects of transactions including financial, operational, and even cultural risks related to M&A, leaders need to involve HR more during the due diligence phase of transactions rather than later on in the deal process.
HR role in due dilligence is become more and more key (especially when involving cultural risks). What needs to be reinforced is their implication earlier in the DD process and not in the very last stages only (or worse, post integration…)
I completely agree. Unfortunately, I don’t think this will change unless the acquiring company assesses the cultural risk from a financial aspect and puts a dollar amount to it. It currently sits more as a qualitative risk factor that is almost always glanced over in preference of more concrete financial risks.
Yes, involving HR sadly sometimes seems to be an afterthought in the M&A due diligence. Maybe, because we ourselves don’t sufficiently voice the importance of the people and culture aspects and don’t showcase our competence in this field. In the worst case though, HR is not even well enough trained to be a valued member of the DD team and doesn’t pay attention to cultural aspects of DD…