Michele Harmon
Wow, how did it get to be 2025?
The year 2024 was a big one for mergers and acquisitions, and I reviewed many of these a few issues back. With these M&As, lots of people lost their jobs, changed their jobs, and got to put buyout money in their bank accounts. There appear to be more buyouts coming in January, because I hear that is the deadline for one of the larger acquisitions and their employees to decide on taking the buyout or staying with the new company. This week, we learned Exxon will lay off around 400 Pioneer employees.
On that note, I want to caution those who stay with your new company. Be careful; the new organization did not hire you; you were inherited, not selected. Maybe I seem flippant, but choosing to stay or go is not for the faint of heart. Do you take the cash or risk staying and then being laid off?
This is when you, the acquired employee, must read the room. How are you being treated? Do you have a real seat at the table? Have your responsibilities been reduced? Are you excluded from meetings you used to attend? Face the hard truth before it is too late and you are laid off with less than the buyout.
Even if you are included at the table, do you feel comfortable in the new culture? Can you continue to grow in your skills and expertise? Unless you plan on retiring in the next few years, start looking for a new job.
Employees are unhappy when their existing beliefs and values clash with the changes brought about by the M&A. This can lead to resistance and lower engagement. Lower engagement leads to poor performance, and then, whether you wanted to be laid off or not, you just gave your new company a reason to send you packing, which is unpleasant, embarrassing, and difficult to explain in future job interviews.
On the other hand, what can the acquiring company do to combat their new employees’ uncertainty? Start addressing the employees’ pocketbooks. Ease the new employees’ fears and address health benefits, retirement accounts, and their pay.
Sadly, most acquiring companies do very little. Out here in the Permian, it is just business.
How you treat your new employees will brand your employee relations reputation for years. People talk. I have heard praise for one company and how, after being in business for decades, they treat their employees who will no longer have jobs with the organization. These employees trust what they have been told.
On the contrary, I hear much grumbling from employees of other organizations that were acquired in 2024. They do not trust their future, do not feel a part of the organization, and are looking for other jobs. A mass exodus may address the immediate problem of too many employees, but it will cost in the long run. The acquiring organization may lose employees they do not want to lose.
Just FYI, there is a law that I suspect acquiring companies are trying to avoid violating, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN Act). The WARN Act is a U.S. labor law that requires employers to provide written notice of plant closings and mass layoffs. It applies to employers with 100 or more employees. Employees must be given notice at least 60 calendar days in advance. The notice also must affect 50 or more employees at a single site. Does anyone remember when Walmart shut down some stores in Texas with no warning?
The bottom line is that your employees have long memories, and when times get tough, you always want to be where your employees want to work.
Hot Topic: If you are a civil servant, be a direct service employee.
Let me set the stage for the next four years: President Trump is a lame duck, so I anticipate many changes sooner rather than later.
How will Donald Trump’s second stint as President affect federal agencies? There are already articles out about federal employees fearing for their jobs. It will take time to unravel decades of federal bureaucratic practice.
When federal employees started getting paid more instead of living with the decades-long unwritten contract that you may get paid less but have a job for life and a pension—well, that practice should take a big hit over the next four years. The minute taxpayers started paying higher and higher salaries, all bets were off.
If postal workers and Amazon delivery drivers have comparable pay, and Amazon employees, for the most part, are At Will, well, you know where I am going. As technology replaces some human roles, only the best performers will retain their jobs.
Federal employees fear Schedule F. This executive order Trump signed in October 2020 allowed agencies to reclassify certain career federal workers in policy-related roles to a new “Schedule F” employment category. If the order had been fully implemented, any employees moved into the new Schedule F classification would have seen their civil service protections removed, making them at-will employees and giving agencies much more flexibility to fire them. Schedule F never went anywhere due to the timing.
Some say it will be revived, but early in this term of office, not at the end.
“Your employees are the heart of your organization.” Dr. Michele Harmon is a Human Resource professional, supporting clients in Texas and New Mexico that range in size from five to more than 3,000 employees. Email: micheleharmon1@gmail.com
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