Dear Colleague,
In addition to what our learned colleague mentioned:
Role of HR in Mergers and Acquisitions
In M&A, the Company Secretariat, Finance, Technical Team, and HR have to work jointly in general.
HR Responsibilities
HR used to focus on:
1. Take a full stock of the organization's blueprint - number of employees, number of unions.
2. Details of settlements that are prevailing and due for renewal, if any.
3. List of approvals like plans approval, registration, site appraisal of the plant, local body approvals, licenses, registrations, and so on.
4. Take stock of financial commitment - contingent liability from an HR angle for any pending industrial disputes, bonus dues, PF dues, ESI dues, wages dues, minimum wages compliance, and if there are gaps, what is the commitment for the past, gratuity actuarial for past liability, increments if any committed but not done, and volume of financial commitment involved and such other list of financial impacts.
5. Pending cases, industrial disputes, enquiry notices, litigations pending, and the SWOT of those matters.
6. Assessment of the workplace industrial relations climate and action plan.
7. Plans on communication strategy to employees and how to streamline the working class further.
8. Terms of employment, code of conduct, standing orders, and how they are implemented now and what is proposed.
9. Total blueprint of SWOT of the unions, local community, employees, and stakeholders.
10. An audit by your company on the HR process, IR process, compliance status to assess the gaps, if any, well in advance.
11. Comparison viz approvals, licenses, and actuals and process to follow.
12. Any past commitments made in writing by the other management and what are the list and impacts in the near future.
13. How to rationalize the manpower to the expected level if there is excess manpower on board.
14. Meeting with the local authorities under different acts - Factories Act, Mines Act, PF, ESI, Contract Labour, and to assess gaps, if any.
15. Third-party risk assessment audit on HR/IR/compliance.
These are some of the usual practices we adopt in our previous companies, which might be useful on a few points for you also.