This episode features an interview with Michelle Press, Director of Corporate Communications at Envoy Solutions. Michelle has over 25 years of experience leading merger and acquisition communications, community relations, and change management. Previously, Michelle’s leadership roles include KemperLesnik, UL Solutions, and Golin. In this episode, Amanda and Michelle open their playbooks on mergers and acquisitions. They discuss the dos and don'ts of a communications plan, the channels and tech that help navigate this shift, and what Michelle has learned throughout her career.
This episode features an interview with Michelle Press, Director of Corporate Communications at Envoy Solutions. Michelle has over 25 years of experience leading merger and acquisition communications, community relations, and change management. Previously, Michelle’s leadership roles include KemperLesnik, UL Solutions, and Golin.
In this episode, Amanda and Michelle open their playbooks on mergers and acquisitions. They discuss the dos and don'ts of a communications plan, the channels and tech that help navigate this shift, and what Michelle has learned throughout her career.
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“If you think about it from an acquisition standpoint, the thing that every business wants to know when requiring a company it's, ‘Do no harm and we want everyone to be able to do their job the way they've been doing it as much as possible,’ as change is happening. So if it's the importance of making sure that people feel like they can still do their job, overwhelming them with email is not going to help them because that's usually when people say is, ‘There's so much here, communication here, I can't get to my own work or I can't get to my own job.’ So how do we help facilitate that in a better way?” – Michelle Press
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:42): Michelle’s background
*(03:41): Segment: Story Time
*(04:03): What Michelle learned during her first acquisition
*(06:53): Segment: Seat at the Table
*(11:50): How IC can be successful without a seat at the table
*(13:49): Segment: Getting Tactical
*(14:15): Dos and don'ts of a merger and acquisition communications plans
*(20:36): How Michelle uses channels and technology to help employees navigate a merger
*(34:00): Segment: Asking for a Friend
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Links:
Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn
Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
Amanda Berry: Michelle, how are you today?
Michelle Press: I'm great. I'm great. I'm glad to be here. So thank you for having me.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. Thanks for joining me. I wanna start off and just understand your background a little bit more before we dive in. Can you walk me through your career journey and what inspired you to pursue communications?
Michelle Press: It was definitely a career that I almost didn't pursue because I had gotten early discouragement from a couple different people. Once my neighbor who said I would never make in communications, another one, I had a professor who said only pretty people get in PR, so. Okay.
Amanda Berry: So lemme just ask about that. Why, why would someone say you didn't, they didn't think you'd make it in communications?
Michelle Press: I think because
they had a challenging time. So luckily. Stubborn. I was also very lucky to have a really fantastic internship. The internship I was at was a local bank and it was one where we did all the marketing, the advertising, the community relations, sales pro media relations. We did everything and it was just a fun, little dynamic with this essentially.
In-house. Team that was doing all of the work for the bank. So it was fun. And then from there, a lot of my career choices were in companies or agencies where I could do a lot. I never wanted to be pigeonholed into one thing because of this early exposure of doing basically at all. And so that's been fun and I have had a good mix of both in-house and agency experience.
I've had about 16 plus years on the agency side and another 10 on in-house side. I might be doing my math a little wrong there, but it makes me sound younger. So there we go.
Amanda Berry: Well, talk about your current role as the director of corporate communication Envoy solutions.
Michelle Press: Yeah. I'm very new to the role in a very new company.
So it's really exciting. I was drawn to it because of the growth of the company and being able to kind of build from the bottom up, essentially build a communications. Team do the internal and external communications for the organization, but because it's growing so rapidly through acquisition, internal communications is my primary right now because we've got a lot of employees, a lot of new teammates that we want to have, understand our culture and figure out how to communicate.
Amongst this disparate group of companies, it's fun. So far 30 days in
Amanda Berry: we're gonna move into our first segment story time.
Welcome to story. Time, story time. Let me tell you your story time.
You just mentioned the word acquisition. So I wanna focus on that. This is a topic that I think is very near and dear to my heart.
I felt very strongly about this. I've been in a few, I have my own advice, but I'd love to hear more about you and your experience. So tell me, can you tell me about your first merger acquisition experience?
Michelle Press: Yeah, it actually happened at the bank and we were being acquired. So we were on the other end of it and brought in kind of late, which was fine.
It taught me the importance of really communicating well with employees in terms of what the changes are and getting them excited about the changes and the opportunities and building that kind of post-acquisition excitement. Most of my experience has been on the inquiry side where I'm working with companies that are acquiring other companies.
I always had that importance of really who are all of our stakeholders and how are we communicating with them? Well, and understanding some of the questions that they might ask and concerns that they have. And then how do you alleviate those along the way?
Amanda Berry: I really wanna dig
into this, but that first experience, what's something that you learned, you feel very strong about that you learned that from that first experience.
Michelle Press: Yes, it is about the stakeholders and specifically employees and their concerns, and really understanding that sometimes in acquisitions, there is an, I don't wanna say an overreliance on employee communications. Because that's extremely important, but I also think that companies need to learn and think about all their other external stakeholders that they may not be considering.
And I will often go through a checklist and I'll start asking specifically, you know, what about this? this group? What about that group? And then they'll be like, oh yes, you're right. Maybe I should need to include them in terms of a stakeholder that we to communicate to because sometimes the deal type has a pretty myopic view of not only who the stakeholders are, but also how to communicate with them.
And we really have to educate them on what people want and don't want. And specifically, during an acquisition period, the initial communications, and most importantly, after the acquisition happens and how are we communicating with them and keeping the excitement while all the changes happen. I
Amanda Berry: definitely am gonna talk to you about before, during and after communications.
Cause I think sometimes people can go, all right, the acquisitions happened, their employees now were done. I don't wanna get too far into that. Now you'd mentioned, uh, just a second ago about external stakeholders. Can you gimme some examples of who those are?
Michelle Press: Right. So sometimes it can be regulators, which sometimes people don't think about, or we had issues with local governments because sometimes they could be concerned that if there was an acquisition, does that mean that something's gonna close and there's gonna be.
Of employees, it can be like one of the other stakeholders that we've had that people have realized that it's important industry associations, right? So as you're acquiring other companies, what is sometimes the reputation of the acquired company inquiries and what is impact on the industry associations?
When these acquits are happening, I sometimes will ask the question. I'll get no other stakeholders and I'll start listing all the different stakeholders that could be impacted by this acquisition. And. You know, most often someone will come up with, oh yeah, we need to consider this other group. And that's important.
Amanda Berry: That's really great. I wanna move into our next segment called seat at the table.
First, get seat the table, get seat, seat. The.
I feel incredibly compelled to, to preach to everyone about how important it is that IC gets a seat at the table early. Maybe some leaders overlook it, or it's just sort of an afterthought, but I, internal communication plays a huge role in mergers and acquisitions. Talk about your experience. Maybe we start with.
How to get a seat at the table and how early to be at the table.
Michelle Press: Yeah. Great question. I can, that's definitely a passion point for me as well. I think one of the challenges that sometimes we have is not being at the table soon enough being told of an acquisition right before it happens is more of a challenge because you're rushing through communications.
You're more likely to miss something and you're not able to strategically plan not only. The acquisition communications, but also post acquisition communications in my role, because I've always had the dual hat of internal and external communications. I've been lucky to be. At the table and worked actually really closely with our HR partners or business unit internal communicators when an acquisition is happening, cuz that is extremely important.
And I would say certainly within the first 30 days prior, or at least two weeks prior, they can start formulating plans in terms of how they're gonna communicate going forward versus trying to kinda scramble on the back end of we've got new employees and how do we communicate how we bring 'em in I'm.
Understand like the, the importance of wanna keep your deal team, you know, somewhat or, and certainly the due diligence team, somewhat small, but there is always a point at which you need to open the tent a little bit and have trusted advisors come in because that communication piece is so important. And I, I think there's lots of studies about if you don't communicate and acquisition well with employees, you're more likely to have a failed acquisition because people are no longer engaged, they're frustrated.
So I think it's extremely important. To talk sooner than
Amanda Berry: later, one of the big groups is your current employees, right? Mm-hmm and the other one is your acquiring employees. Now there are other groups, like you mentioned external stakeholders, but I, I wanna just really stress how important it's the ISC gets at the table.
Can you give me some understanding of, of what internal communication preps for, for current employees? That's important to make sure that it's in. Not day of, not the day before, but like, right. Really, really plan. Well, can you, can you talk a little bit about that?
Michelle Press: Yeah, it goes back to stakeholder mapping, right?
Because you can say your current employees, but they all have different needs and they wanna be, have the communication. At different times and, and there's certainly other ways to communicate. So like your current employees always wanna know more about the acquisition and kind of the excitement around the acquisition.
And, and they certainly wanna know when they can contact their new colleagues, but there's usually a cadence to that. In some cases, you're all employees they might wanna know more about just general, like what's happening with acquisition, but your sales teams might wanna know more about like, what do we have to sell next?
Right. So then there's different groups that you need to. Connecting in the communication and the cadence might be a little bit different and understanding some of the channels that we have to connect. The two is important and on the acquired side, the company's being acquired again. You can sit there and say general employees, but then also leadership is another bucket because your leadership on the other side, They're the ones who are often getting more inundated in terms of the needs of acquisition.
So they're driving the sales and trying to make sure that they're hitting their numbers. They're also trying to work with integration team about some of the changes that are happening within the organization. So it's, I think you've got buckets of people that you have to really narrow down. So it's not just.
Employees on one end of the other, is who specifically are those employees? What groups and like, when do we need to communicate and what are the challenges that they have when things happen? And again, I think it's one of the challenges that we have, and I've seen on the post acquisition side. Is we're communicating broadly when changes are happening, but not necessarily bringing people along with those changes.
And in some cases, your leadership may know that the change is coming, but the employees are getting told like right this time where it's going to happen. So I'm a big believer in what is at cadence in terms of pre prep and making sure that they understand what's happening and why the why is obviously very important to most
Amanda Berry: employees.
Yeah. And we're internal comms folks like us. So we're really focused on that employee perspective and employee needs. I've been in situations where I find out the day before just to, so I could, yeah, I could create the zoom link yeah. And then I've had situations where I knew two months in advance so that we could prepare materials based on those employee types.
You know, what does this mean for my job on both sides? Throw a, you know, big celebration party day off. So really having that time to prep is important. If internal communications isn't invited to the table, what can they do to still be successful?
Michelle Press: I would say having
their own playbook, I'm a big believer in that.
And that comes from anything like. Crisis is kind of the same thing. Anything that you have where there's an urgent response, having a playbook. So like when something happens, you can sit there and go, okay, here are the steps that we need to take and go, go, go. But I would also say it's extremely important to argue for that 10 seat at the table.
And that's probably more important. And I think when you have the playbook, Because this is what I've created in the past is like, what is the communications cadence? And they see that you're thinking strategically about this. And then you're more likely to also get the seat at the table because otherwise you're just think I only need you later.
You're like, here's why you need me sooner because we need to go through all these things. I need to understand these and then day one, we can move a little bit smoother. One of the other things that I, I strongly believe in is also doing the. So after an acquisition has happened, how are you taking the pulse of the employees of the acquired company to understand where some of the communication challenge or gaps are happening?
Cause you can use that to also inform leadership about what we need to do again, moving forward for communication, but then also it helps you make the case that internal coms need to be on the, at the table a little bit sooner.
Amanda Berry: How often do you
do like post survey? I mean, they usually start, you know, yeah.
Post acquisition, but how do, how often do you do this? I've personally done, you know, for like the first month, every week, that way we can get yeah. Up to date, live information and then maybe start
the rest of it. So how do you do it?
Michelle Press: Yeah, that's basically the cadence as well. And I always say that. From an merchants and acquisitions standpoint, I've always evolved the plan along the way, because I love getting feedback from people about what's working.
What's not working, I think the weekly polls work, but if they find that even that's too exhausting for people, then you might go and reduce a cadence a little bit more. So it's like feedback on the feedback loop, but I think anything helps in terms of really refining the process is important. I'm
Amanda Berry: gonna move us into our next segment, getting tactical.
I'm
trying to figure out tactics and be perfect, honest, and I didn't have to worry about tactics too much. Here I am in charge and trying to say, why did you sleep through tactics, tactics,
tactics. You've said the word playbook, like six times. I wanna open up, I wanna open up your playbook and, and pick your brand on some of these common questions.
Let's just start with a broad one. What are some big dos and don'ts of merger acquisition communication plans. The
Michelle Press: dos and don'ts, it's easy to start with the don'ts. Don't wait to last minute that I think is the biggest thing. And the big do is do you have a plan? I'm a huge proponent of having the playbooks and have it really concise.
So the playbook should have all your key messages that you're going to have, because that informs all the rest of communications. It should have a timeline. And that one is constantly updated as things. To know, like who's doing what, when, which goes to the roles and raw responsibilities. Like again, who's doing what, when I've seen a lot of acquisitions where people are either sending communications out piecemeal for people to review and approve versus having it part of a single kit, or they're asking different people to do different things and it's just not coordinated.
So the playbook really helps put everyone on the same page in terms of what they're doing when I, we include a lot of detail in it. So if it's about like the sales people and who's gonna call. Who, because in some cases, if you've got joint customers that are really top customers, making sure that the two people who might jointly call them together, you've got that short list and everyone's agreed upon it.
And they've accrued upon the approach to connecting with them, because that also goes to the experience along the way from our leadership internally as we're doing the communication. But then also the post acquisition communications.
Amanda Berry: I feel like a
big part of creating a good plan and a part of the playbook is the relat.
That I have with, you know, my HR business partner. Talk about that relationship and why that's important during a merger acquisition?
Michelle Press: I've always had strong relationships with, in terms of the key partnerships, you know, legal, the deal team, HR, the business leaders, and we've got. Different business marketers, just to kind of make sure that everything is going smoothly from an HR perspective, it is extremely important because they hold a lot of the keys and often are the ones who kind of post acquisition, depending on the structure of the organization are taking the lead on some of the post acquisition communications.
So if it's not happening from the center internal coms, or if there's no dedicated internal coms support, if HR is taking it on, you need to have that handoff to know what's, what's going to happen in the, the back. I have great
Amanda Berry: relationships with my HR folk for that reason. Cause I feel like for me, so many of those questions, concerns employees are gonna have are related.
It's usually their it, when do I get my new computer? When will I get my email address? Right? Or HR related is my job safe? Will I get able to transfer my PTO over? What's my 401k distribution now or whatever those are.
Michelle Press: They're extremely
important in, in understanding a lot of the employee concerns because part of the playbook is the FAQs.
What questions will employees maybe ask? And they can come up with some additional questions that they get from their perspective. You know, when someone's talking to on a one on one to add to that, Playbook of questions. There was an interesting acquisition that happened where we had our FAQs and we had leaders who were trying to take out questions.
Cause they were like, well, we don't wanna answer that. I'm like, it doesn't matter if you don't wanna answer it. They're going to ask the question. So how are we prepared to answer those questions? And I think that's also important that leaders. See that these are the concerns and questions that people have.
And if you don't have answers for them, you need to think about that before we roll into the town hall and start getting it from the employees,
Amanda Berry: that's such a good call out sometimes. You know, as I see, we're asked to do stuff like that, come with questions, and we may know that some questions are very sensitive, but we have to it's our job to help them prepare.
I've worked with leaders who we'd sit in a room and they would say, ask me the hardest questions and we would, and it, and I would feel bad. And it just, you know, I'm asking those tough ones. Am I gonna have a job tomorrow? And they have to be able to answer those questions. Right,
Michelle Press: right. One nice thing too.
When you think about post acquisition communications, and I know we really touched on that, but this reminded me where when you get to the post acquisition communications, the stories are gonna be really important. What are those concerns that people have? And do we have stories after the fact that can help all.
Concerns. Right. So will I have a job? And the answer is always, you know, that we, we always hope to maintain employees, but showing the stories of employees from the acquired company who are getting promoted, who are being integrated into the larger organization and stuff that is really helpful to show people that you have a career path within this larger organization, because that's ultimately what a lot of people also wanna.
Amanda Berry: Well, let's talk about timeline. Let's start with pre-merger day or pre-merger happening. What are some things, documents, events I see folks need to do to start preparing for the merger. What can they be working on prior to let's say you get your full 30 days. What are you doing in that
Michelle Press: time? In that 38 days, I am solidifying the messaging to make sure that we've got it down, solidifying the FAQs, because we know that employers are gonna ask those questions and really nail down those, I call squishy questions and no one wants to answer that they wanna deal with on a later basis.
But like, what are those? And really working with our partners to, to get those answers as much as possible. And it is planning for. As much as the, the timeline of the day of, and making sure it goes as smooth as possible. It is also planning for what's gonna happen afterwards. What is the cadence of our polls?
If we're going to be able to do that, how are we going to do the polls with the employees? Is it via email or is it some other kind of distribution that we're going to have? And then how are we going to work to continue to communicate with. I'm gonna say the broader stakeholder group and get it in the way that they want to.
So people know what's happening on the acquired side and they're excited about their new colleagues and then vice versa. The new colleagues are excited about being part of this new organization and, and pulling stories that we can use. So we, even along the way to show the success of the acquisition, because that is often a pretty common question that people get, or at least our CEOs get at town halls.
It's like, okay, you acquired this company now. What, how has it been successful? Can you show us. Leading to something amazing for this company. And so you always wanna make sure that as you're planning communications, you're also thinking about all these other channels that you're working on and how you're going to continue to make sure that it's a, an agenda item to communicate.
Amanda Berry: And let's talk about channels. Yeah. But I wanna talk about channels. Cause I feel like this is where I'm trying to connect everyone to like an intranet page, right? Yeah. We may set up a slack channel, like a temporary stop channel for all the, the newly acquired employees let's say. And we may post, Hey reminder, tomorrow's a benefits, lunch and learn.
Find out more here. Thanks to the intranet. We might have meetings, town halls. So talk about how you use channels tech technology to help people navigate through a merger and acquisition.
Michelle Press: I'm a huge fan of less is more when we can because people are overwhelmed just with the noise. And I think that's across the board.
And then certainly when you've just been acquired, you're drinking through a fire hose and you're overwhelmed with all the communications that are happening. I and internet is extremely important, cuz it's a great single source of truth to be able to send people that way. When you have one that people can get into it.
You and I, I think connected greatly on this topic because having an internet. People can connect from the outside is extremely important because there are some platforms that's a little limited where you can't have people from the outside. And if that's your single source of truth, to be able to communicate to people who don't have the same email or same platform, it can hinder communication.
And then you're pretty reliant on emails and manager communication, which I think ends up being the key. The other thing I've done in some acquisitions. Absence of having an, an intranet is having a weekly newsletter, right? So to the employees that we've acquired here are the things that are happening in your world.
And here's why here's what you can see. That's coming up. It's a single email. Everyone gets it. It's transparent and it's short and somewhat free from some of the, the text tax week. But you've got the voice of the company that's coming out. And I think that's, that can be a good channel. To do, and you can still have it and connect to the internet if you want to.
But if an absence of having an internet that can also work really, really well. And we work on our end with our other channels with town halls and managers meetings and finding ways that we can integrate the acquired company pretty quickly.
Amanda Berry: I'm just gonna go back to that original question I had, and we took a little sidebar here, but like during the day of, in that, that short period of during the Mac acquisition, what are some ideal events?
Things internal communications can do to help a really smooth transitions for all employees.
Michelle Press: At that time. When I think about day of it is, you know, we have done, you know, the town halls with the celebration with employees gifts as desk drop, welcome gifts. Your
Amanda Berry: new mug with your new company name on it.
Michelle Press: Right. Right, right. We see it on a new employees these days. It has to be meaningful. And we were getting to the point where it was an evolution going from something that was very simple to a little more elaborate, where we had welcome notes. And then we would have information about their new company and everything, like in a backpack that they, they would.
Right. That can be pretty expensive for a lot of companies, but it was certainly meaningful to have everything kind of packaged in one thing. And thinking about the town hall, not as just a one way communication, but a two way communication. So you have the town hall, I'll make it a celebration. Our CEO here will sit there and throw out t-shirts to people who ask the question.
So we gamifies it because sometimes people are a little shy at that point. And we've done lunches for all the employees too, so they can actually meet the leader. And talk with people and then often setting up like one on one with HR. So having someone on staff with HR for a day or two, where if people wanna come in post town hall, where all of a sudden they start thinking about these questions that they didn't wanna ask and stuff, being able to have that moment where they can just come in and ask the questions that they didn't.
Ask live. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: And having all of that plotted in that timeline we were talking about earlier is so helpful. I find that employees, new employees, as quiet employees, being able to see you have that first week, you have seven opportunities to talk to HR, total rewards folks about their questions, you know, cause it can be overwhelming.
Oh, I always put myself in that position. Think I don't think, I know I've never been in a company being acquired, but I've been a part of a company that's acquiring multiple companies. Yeah. So I still try to put myself in that position. You mentioned that you've been acquired. How has that helped you sort of prepare for, for the other side of
that?
Michelle Press: Yeah. You know, again, it was just understanding like how I felt like kind of just the surprise of it all, but understanding like what people's concerns are at the end. Now, when I got acquired that was many years ago, but every time I'm in acquisition, one thing I love going to the town halls day of, and during the lunch and off and ask.
People one on one. So beyond the polls that go out that are a little bit more impersonal, I like actually asking people. So, um, what did you think? How could we have done better? I want that feedback because your playbook can your be your playbook, but it needs to be somewhat flexible to understand what is hitting and what is missing in terms of the communications.
So I think getting. Feedback is important as a communicator. Yeah.
Amanda Berry: And you're able to use that feedback for next time, right? Yes. Save all that feedback. I, I can't stress, but enough to people and that once you build this stuff, the playbook you build, even if you have an intranet site, you can just sort of copy and paste it and use a lot of those same practices and lessons learned from that first time.
What are some lessons that you've you've had along the way?
Michelle Press: Definitely the not being at the table soon enough has been really interesting because you're scrambling and you're reacting and you're not being strategic or thoughtful. So that is an important thing. When we started doing the newsletter, right.
Employees are just on the other side are really overwhelmed by communication and they might be getting some from HR and they might getting some it, and, and you may have an integration team that may be communicating, but putting it into a solid, more friendly looking newsletter certainly helps in terms of the communications.
And then the extreme importance of having a central source of truth and being able to connect everyone day one, if we can from, or at least within the first few days into a central internet is extremely important. I was another company where we had a lot of acquisitions and what the business teams end up doing were actually creating a separate.
System where they were copying and pasting all of the relevant information to the other team, the other company, which is takes a lot of work versus having one place where you can immediately connect them and say, okay, here's all the things that you need to know about this company and what's happening with your acquisition.
Amanda Berry: So I love that
idea. You've just sort of thrown out. I, I don't think I've ever thought about it in this way, but creating a special newsletter mm-hmm send out, you know, weekly. Cause when you think about the number of emails these new employees get, and you'd mentioned earlier how overwhelmed they already are.
Yeah. And now you've got HR sending 'em emails, you've got total rewards benefits. You may have facilities sending them email. You may have it sending them emails. There could be. People sending emails, even if they get to a day, that's still overwhelming. I know keep messages like that unread. And at the end of the day, your end of the week, you could have a bunch and you need to register her benefits.
You need to submit your direct deposit information, whatever it is. So I really like that idea of having a special newsletter that then you can coordinate, you know, CEO message at the top message from HR message, from benefits message from it team. It's all in one spot.
Michelle Press: Exactly. And if you think about it from an acquisition standpoint, the thing.
At free business wants to know, like when, when we're acquiring a company, it's do no harm. And we want everyone to be able to do their job the way they've been doing it as much as possible. Like as, again, as change is happening. So if it's the importance of making sure that people feel like they can still do their job, overwhelming them with email is not going to help them because that's usually people say is, there's so much here.
Communication here. I can't get to my own work or I can't get to my own job. So how do we help facilitate that in, in a better.
Amanda Berry: Is there anything
else we haven't covered in this section? I feel like I could talk to you about this
forever.
Michelle Press: it's only one of my favorite subjects.
Amanda Berry: Yes. Yeah. And mine too.
Honestly, I think it's because I've been in both and I know that when given the opportunity I can come in and really help and provide value when I've, when I'm given that 30 day, you know, two month window to build plans and. Build internet pages and really set up a, a great system. And then I've like, I, I mentioned earlier, I've been in this position where I literally found out the day before and they're like, can you set up an intranet page?
I was like, oh, I have so many
questions.
Michelle Press: Yes. Yes. Yes. I know all of that in terms of, I guess, kind of going back to one of our questions around the, the dos and don'ts, and is why I also love being part of the due diligence phase is understanding the strategy. The strategic rationale of the acquisition is important for developing messages, but then I can also start doing my own due diligence.
So then ahead of time, I have some questions answered before the day and, but I'm also an advocate of having more of our key kind of function areas. At the seated table in a due diligence phase, because there's all these questions that you wanna know prior to it. And it's easier to get the information before an acquisition happens than after when everyone is just scrambling to understand what's happening for me.
Amanda Berry: I
just sort of pause and take a minute and close my eyes and go, if I was being inquired, what would my concerns be? What questions would I have? Right. And just sit there and let those flow out and realize that you're gonna be helping put that content together so that they feel.
Michelle Press: But also think about what experience you want them to have.
Yeah. Right. So like, again, if you've got your mission, vision and values of your organization, can they experience this from day one and how do we wanna experience it? And that should also inform the communications and communications cadence as well.
Amanda Berry: How do you start connecting? You
said mission, mission values.
How do you start connecting people that are coming in new to a company to this, their new mission, their new vision, their new values. What, how do you make that a part that, you know, during and post, you mentioned stories earlier, right? Yes. But can you talk a little bit about that too?
Michelle Press: For an acquired company.
It often starts at the town hall when they're seeing this for the first time, but it's often building on that and making sure every communication starts looping those things in. Right. So again, going back to the newsletter, in terms of the, the communications coming out, like a lot of this is around the strategy that we're.
Building as an organization and how they fit into strategy and why some of these things are happening. It is pulling out those stories that are also emphasizing the values of the, the organization. You know, if we want it to be about respect or collaboration and especially collaboration is always an easy one sometimes because within the first, you know, a hundred days, often sales is pretty linked together.
And so knowing those initial sales stories, you can bring it back to the larger organization and talk about how. This is benefiting everyone in terms of a collaboration piece and going back to the, kind of the core internet, or, you know, other communications where it it's a central source of truth, where they just start seeing that over and over again and making sure it's weaved in much like your own
employees.
Amanda Berry: And, and I wanna go back to this question we had about. Five or 10 minutes ago. now we talked about pre during and now let's talk about post communications and, and what that looks like for both newly acquired employees and your current employees. What do those communications look like? What are you during during that time?
Michelle Press: Ideally we're preplanning, right? It's. And looking at the stakeholders and what their needs are, and working really close with the integration team too, to know what cadence that they have, because a lot of times they know, or have planned out the sequencing of when people can start communicating, but we have some core channels that we use that are.
Everyone has from the get go. You know, obviously there there's email, we
try to integrate
email as fast as possible, even if we're emailing out to their current email addresses. So they get the CEO messaging. They're part of the town halls. They're part of our manager meetings right away. We've got a newsletter that they see right away.
So there's a core things that they just start seeing about the company. But it's also finding ways where we can build in additional milestones. And there's the planning, right. You know, where are we having times where leadership can come in on a regular basis and talk with them and be part of their town halls as they're integrating, how are we bringing in if they've got a.
They've got their own comms team. Our marketing team are someone who is coming to our own communications meetings, where we can start working with them to pull out those stories for their own organization. And that we're communicating also out, like, what is this fantastic company doing? And so our, our.
Current employees understand a little bit more about the acquisition, but there, I think there's a lot of different ways that we start and can continue to, to weave in on, on both sides, like the larger story, but then also build in those moments where they're connecting with the sales organization or other pieces, parts of organization that are important for collaboration.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. I love that idea of working with partnering with, let's say their internal coms folks. I I've done that before too, and said, we wanna try to make these new employees feel welcome. What are some things you can do? And that we can, we can pepper in and, and show pictures of, or tell stories about that'll help people begin to see, literally see themselves and the communications and the employee experience.
Yeah. And it was a great partnership.
Michelle Press: It is great. And you know, and this is where I think internets are extremely effective, where you can have just about anyone post a story and people start seeing that. And that is another way. I mean, it's, it's similar to all of our other external social channels where, um, people can see, they can comment and they feel part of it when they can actually.
See what's happening from all over the organization. It's a lot more transparent and then can start sharing best practices too. We've also been really big on the community service side of things, and that is another way in which employees can really start feeling good about an organization when they feel like they're part of a company that cares at a community level and celebrating a lot of those successes.
Amanda Berry: I'm gonna move us into our last segment, asking for a friend
Producer: who's asking for a friend. Hey, asking for a friend, asking for a friend
Amanda Berry: you've mentioned earlier in this, that you're building a coms program. Yeah. So, and you you've done a lot, clearly done S acquisitions. I love that. It's been great talking to you about that. Overall. What advice would you give to a first time communications leader? Who's building their own program.
Michelle Press: Yes, it is meet a lot of people.
Ask a lot of great questions, ask a lot of stupid questions, listen and extremely build relationships is, is the big part of it because everyone within your organization, every level in every department at some point is going to be important to what you need to accomplish. At some point they're gonna be your ally.
They're gonna be your advisory board as you're building out your communications. So I would say it's extremely important to build all of those internal relationships.
Amanda Berry: I love this topic, mergers and acquisitions. And if our listeners are, are hearing this and going, well, you know, this, this is great. It may, I may not ever do this.
You can search this on the web that mergers and acquisitions, and there's so many of them going on. There's more now than in history. It was really pushed by COVID 19. So it's been a huge challenge for companies to, to make those successful. That's a huge challenge going on based outta COVID. But I'm wondering if you have any other big challenges that communication professionals and leaders will face in the future.
Top of mind, it's
Michelle Press: always the noise because there are more channels than ever before, externally and internally. So, you know, from an internal standpoint, you're competing with external channels as a company, you've got a lot of external channels and you have internal channels. I think there's this. It is extreme importance to being thoughtful about what channels that you do pursue.
And I encourage everyone to be creative in trying new channel. But also understanding the effectiveness of them with limited resources, where are you gonna really put your money in terms of the channels and which ones are extreme are effective. You're gonna understand that by asking a lot of people, like how do they wanna be communicated with and what kind of content do they want to hear?
So I, I, I find the battle of the noise is gonna be. An ongoing challenge. I've never been a fan of like technology for technology's sake. It is all about like, what is our strategy and who is our audience and what do we want them to know feel do, and how are we communicating that in the best possible way?
So that, that, and it's on their terms. And I, that comes with a communication and conversation with other people. Yeah, that's such
Amanda Berry: a good point. Yeah. I, I had someone tell me, you can have all the technology and channels in the world, but if it's not what employees want, it's just a huge voice of your time.
And that's true. Right, right. We got slack and all these different things, but if employees aren't getting what they want from it. So that that's exactly. So yes, that's exactly my experience.
Michelle Press: Yes. I know. I mean, there's a lot of really great ones out there and definitely on a list to try, but, and sometimes, and especially with companies, when you are a lot of acquisitions is not everyone has the same channels right now, or are on the same systems and, you know, You know, one of the things we've talked about is people who are, are desk list employees, right?
Some people still have phones. Some people don't have phones. Some people, you know, don't necessarily want to have that direct connection to, or that technology connection to their business or to the company. So then how do you reach them? So it's, it's also still really thinking about the traditional channels, even if it means like posting something on the back of the bathroom door, but you know, you gotta think about how people wanna be communicated and, and.
Make sure you're, you're reaching them in the way that they wanna reach. Yeah. You
Amanda Berry: just gotta ask them. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm, , uh, everyone's getting better at their jobs. What do you do to get better at your job, Michelle?
Michelle Press: You know, it's gotta be continuous learning. Sometimes I will say that I learn on a day, day basis.
Right? So every time you do something, it's. Getting the feedback of what's working and what's not working and thinking of ways to kind of improve things or change things along the way, you know, right now, because I'm building, it's really kind of understanding what's there and, and laying things out more specifically.
Um, I also am a huge. Huge, um, fan of just learning outside. So I'm, I'm always observing the, kind of the best practices that are out there, and I'm not shy about asking other people because there's lots of brilliant ideas out there. So how do I have tap into my network to say, Hey, you know, we're doing this, have you done something similar and kind of what has worked for you and what are the challenges that I need to think about as I'm thinking about, um, implementing something similar?
So I think getting feedback from other people is, is also important and I'm big on the network, but having interior network is huge.
Amanda Berry: Yeah. I like the idea. I I've, I've spoken to a couple people and they've said the same thing, learning and, and even goes so far to say, learn any new skill. It just helps rewire your brain differently.
And you can think about things differently.
Michelle Press: Yes, yes. And again, you know, there's a lot of information out there. So being able to read up and, and see what's happening, but then kind of asking people on the ground, have you looked at this, have you not looked at that? You might be the pioneer in the area, which is great, but you might also find that other people have done something and can kind of get you ahead a little faster just by.
Learning from what they've done.
Amanda Berry: Well, Michelle, this has been a lot of fun before I let you go. Let our listeners know where they can find
Michelle Press: you so happy to connect on LinkedIn. Um, my full LinkedIn is Michelle bunch
Amanda Berry: press. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you for joining me. This has been a lot of fun.
Michelle Press: Yeah. Thank
you.
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