How Continuous Performance Management Supports Organizations During a Merger or Acquisition

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) promise growth, market expansion, and operational synergies. Despite the potential rewards, M&As are notoriously difficult. Cultural clashes. Talent attrition. System fragmentation. Employee fear. These are just a few of the forces working against success. Having continuous performance management (CPM) during a merger or acquisition will reduce these risks, giving HR leaders an advantage in retaining, aligning, and managing the combined workforce. 

According to a Fortune analysis of 40,000 companies, the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions hovers between 70% and 75%. McKinsey’s research points to a familiar culprit: Nearly half of M&A failures are attributed to organizational issues such as cultural misalignment and poorly executed operating model changes.

In the high-stakes chaos of an M&A, making sure your workforce can operate like a well-oiled machine is central to your success. The right performance management processes and system can be a powerful transformation accelerator for pre- and post-merger integration.

8 reasons why your M&A could falter  

HR leaders must ensure that their people, processes, and cultures integrate smoothly during a merger or acquisition. Blending company cultures, managing employee communications, integrating HR processes and tools, and making sure employees have clarity and feel engaged, valued, and secure during and after the transition are top of mind. Success depends on overcoming these forces that could derail the process.

1. Strategic misalignment 

Strategic organizational alignment during M&A is critical. Employees need to understand the new company’s vision, their role in it, and how their work supports the broader strategy. But integration often brings conflicting leadership styles, unclear reporting lines, and a patchwork of tools and systems – making alignment difficult.

2. Siloed systems

M&A often leaves HR with a tangled web of disconnected systems – goals in one platform, engagement surveys in another, learning in an LMS, and calibration buried in spreadsheets. The result? Fragmented data, inefficiency, and limited visibility into your workforce.

This makes it difficult to answer questions like:

• What are teams working on?
  
• Who are our top performers?
  
• Where do we need to intervene?

3. Retaining talent

Employee retention during M&As is one of the most challenging aspects of integrating two organizations. Research shows that attrition spikes after M&As. When employees depart, whether due to fear or uncertainty, the acquiring company loses momentum and innovation potential. 

4. Unclear career opportunities

If employees believe their career progression may be stymied, they will cast around for other opportunities. High-potential employees are often the most anxious during an M&A. They’ve invested in building influence, credibility, and career paths, especially if they are employed by the acquired company – and they fear losing it all. 

5. Rumors and misunderstandings sparked by anxiety and fear 

Change breeds anxiety, especially when people feel they’re not being told the full story or are unclear about the new organization’s direction. M&A’s create an environment ripe for speculation, misinformation, and fear. And that will wreak havoc in the new entity, forcing HR to spend resources putting out fires and doing damage control.

6. Productivity drops

When teams are unclear on their priorities or unsure if they’ll even have a job, productivity dips. Employees shift their attention from performance to survival mode.

7. Communication breakdowns

One of the most common pitfalls during integration is the breakdown in internal communications. Employees don’t know what’s changing or why. Misinformation spreads faster than facts. Strategies aren’t cascaded effectively, leaving employees unclear or disconnected. While leaders may believe the plan is clear, missteps will occur without a structured mechanism for ongoing communication of strategy and changes through all company levels.

8. Conflicting cultures

When two cultures collide, the atmosphere can get tense. People resist change. Legacy loyalties emerge. Miscommunication and mistrust bubble up, even creating a corrosive “us vs. them” mentality that leads to a loss of trust.

How continuous performance management addresses M&A challenges in the workforce

Betterworks’ continuous performance management software is forward-looking and embedded in the flow of work. It enables performance – aligning goals across the organization, fostering transparent expectations, and supporting ongoing coaching and feedback. This creates clarity, accountability, and momentum at every level.

It’s transformational, unlike traditional performance management, which is typically an annual or biannual exercise focused on past performance, compensation, and promotion. When performance management is treated as a compliance task, it’s disconnected from daily work and contributes little to helping the new entity succeed.

In the context of M&A, performance enablement, on the other hand, becomes a strategic lever – driving clarity, engagement, and trust when they’re needed most. It’s not just an HR process – it’s the fabric that holds a newly formed organization together. 

Enables organizational alignment

A continuous performance model provides the structure to align and activate strategy at every level. With Betterworks, organizations can cascade goals through flexible frameworks like OKRs, giving teams and individuals ownership over their work by providing the flexibility and autonomy to connect their goals to the organization’s. 

Frequent conversations and feedback clarify direction, reinforce expectations, and drive commitment to the new vision. Transparent goals provide leadership with real-time insight into progress, allowing them to pivot quickly and keep everyone moving in sync.

Integrates disparate systems

Overlapping or siloed HR systems leave you without a single source of truth and the data you need to make intelligent workforce decisions.

Betterworks brings everything together in its continuous performance management software platform – goal setting, feedback, conversations, recognition, calibration, engagement, and analytics. HR gains a true system of record for talent, with visibility into what teams are working on, who the top performers are, where bottlenecks exist, and what skills are in-house.

Seamless integrations with tools like Workday, SuccessFactors, Slack, Teams, Salesforce, Jira, and LinkedIn Learning ensure performance happens in the flow of work and isn’t burdensome. And with high adoption and consistent data, you can make better, faster workforce decisions – all from one unified system.

Retains talent

Retention requires creating an atmosphere of psychological safety for all employees.

Clear and transparent communication is the antidote to attrition. Leadership must be clear not only about strategy, but also about opportunities. Emphasizing growth and career development allows high-performing talent to see how they can contribute meaningfully to the new entity and have a promising future based on their performance. 

Betterworks makes top talent visible through transparent goal achievement, consistent feedback, and analytics. HR leaders can quickly identify flight risks, understand performance patterns, and intervene early with recognition, career discussions, and growth opportunities.

Retention starts with visibility. Betterworks makes that simple. Learn more about ways to reduce employee turnover.

Spotlights career continuity and growth

High performers, in particular, have invested effort in building their personal brand and connections – and they don’t want to see that hampered in the new organization. 

Betterworks supports career sustainability for all by enabling employees to incorporate growth and development goals into their performance plans and by making progress and achievements visible and data-driven. Employees co-create goals that reflect their growth aspirations. Managers offer feedback centered around career coaching, not just job execution. Training, skill-building, and leadership qualities are cataloged. And analytics dashboards help HR see where their top talent resides, enabling them to better invest in their development.

By combining Betterworks’ data-driven calibration with an organization’s internal mobility opportunities, the performance management platform becomes a mechanism for surfacing current and future leaders and giving them reason to stay.

Cascades clear and open communications to tamp down rumors 

Like a game of telephone, it’s often the case that what is clear to leadership doesn’t often get communicated properly through all levels in the new entity. But, consistent, transparent conversations replace silence with trust – and speculation with truth. How you do it matters.

Betterworks promotes clarity and comprehension through structured communications. Regular, templated 1:1s and check-ins between managers, individual employees, and teams ensure everyone has time to discuss their concerns and gain clarity. When questions or issues arise in between formal meetings, anytime check-ins in the platform make it easy for employees to get the clarity they need.

Additionally, in-app guides can deliver CEO messages, help managers coach for development or prepare for a performance review, or offer a step-by-step explanation for employees about how to create strong goals – meeting people where they are, in the flow of work, and easing the burden on bandwidth-strapped companies.

Promotes productivity

Alignment with the company’s strategic goals, and clarity and transparency about expectations, give employees the structure they need to remain engaged and productive.

The Betterworks platform provides continuous goal visibility and communication. Everyone understands how their goals impact business strategy and has an execution roadmap to remain aligned and accountable. Frequent, lightweight conversations provide a structure for capturing and cascading leadership’s goals and strategy throughout the organization, discussing concerns, and clearing roadblocks. Lightweight feedback helps teams and individuals course-correct quickly without waiting for a formal performance review.

Structured conversations, held at regular intervals, re-establish focus and remove distractions so people can continue progressing despite the uncertainty.

Delivers transparent and timely communications

Bake transparency and clarity into everyday workflows.

Betterworks acts as both an amplifier and a clarifier. Goal alignment makes strategy visible to everyone. Feedback loops help uncover confusion or resistance early. Regular check-ins keep conversations flowing. And customizable conversation templates ensure managers communicate consistently, even if they’re unsure how.

Bridges culture gaps  

Employees want to feel understood, secure, and valued.

Betterworks ties cultures together by promoting structured and unstructured conversations and feedback among managers and employees. Open communications create a sense of inclusion and belonging in and across teams. Recognition features establish a shared culture of appreciation by spotlighting cross-team wins, reinforcing shared values, and rewarding desired behaviors. Employees feel seen and valued – not lost in the shuffle. Using Betterworks Engage, HR can also measure sentiment and identify cultural pain points in real time, before they escalate.

Betterworks for M&A at a glance

Challenge	Need	Betterworks solution
Strategic alignment	Ensure business strategy cascades through the organization for clarity and activation.	Goals, Conversations, and Feedback align priorities and enable dialogue so strategy cascades clearly and activates alignment.
Siloed systems	Optimize visibility into the workforce with a single, integrated source of rich data for intelligent talent management.	With Goals, Conversations, Feedback, 1:1s, Recognition, Calibration, Engage, Advanced Analytics, and integrations, companies replace siloed systems with a single, connected source of rich data to optimize visibility and drive intelligent talent management.
Talent retention	Identify and retain critical talent by providing psychological safety.	Goals, Conversations, Feedback, Calibration, and Advanced Analytics help create a culture that retains top talent by aligning priorities, surfacing insights, and fostering open dialogue.
Career continuity – top talent	Ensure career sustainability for top performers.	Goals, Conversations, Calibration, and Advanced Analytics work together to provide clarity, feedback, and insight – ensuring career continuity and sustaining growth for top performers.
Dispelling fear	Reduce anxiety and build trust from the get-go.	Regular 1:1 conversations and company-wide goals provide feedback, growth opportunities, and clear alignment to priorities.
Productivity	Increase focus and engagement for maximum progress during uncertainty.	With Goals, Conversations, Feedback, and Advanced Analytics, employees get open communication and direction to keep moving forward.
Transparent communications	Keep employees connected and minimize confusion and rumors.	With Goals, Conversations, and Feedback, employees stay aligned and informed, preventing confusion and rumors.
Cultural differences/resistance	Bridge cultural gaps and build appreciation and trust by promoting shared values,  inclusion, and belonging.	With Conversations, Feedback, Recognition, and Engage, employees build trust and appreciation through open dialogue and inclusion.

Making M&A easier for HR

Mergers and acquisitions are complex – but your HR tech doesn’t have to be. Betterworks helps HR teams stay agile and aligned during and after a merger by combining deep flexibility with user-friendly simplicity and a partnership to help you at every step.

Flexibility and configurability

Betterworks architecture is compatible with legacy tech stacks. The platform’s flexibility allows newly merged companies to provide a consistent performance framework while enabling individual departments to support unique needs and ways of working. 

HR admins can configure cycles, templates, and even the UI without code, and spin up custom reports or dashboards on the fly to spot post-merger talent risks. From Slack nudges and configurable conversations, to feedback and 1:1 templates, to matrixed goal structures, Betterworks adapts to the needs of complex, evolving organizations.

Simplicity and adoption

AI-assisted tools for goals, feedback, feedback summaries, and conversations, combined with a consumer-grade UI and deep integrations, make Betterworks easy to integrate, adopt, and use for employees, managers, and HR alike.

Expert implementation and support

The Betterworks Professional Services team partners with customers at every step to remove complexity and trepidation from the process. Over hundreds of implementations, they’ve delivered 95%+ of projects on time and on budget, with a customer NPS of 90+. Dedicated customer service managers help ensure that your performance enablement suite delivers on expectations and continues to evolve with you as your needs change. 

One platform, one workforce, one vision

Betterworks isn’t just a performance enablement platform for HR – it’s an integration accelerator. When your workforce performs, your business performs. With our enterprise-ready tools and expert implementation and support teams, you can manage massive change with clarity, connection, and confidence.

If you’re a CHRO preparing for or navigating an M&A, let’s talk. Betterworks helps you bring your people together to power performance management that will improve business outcomes long after a merger or acquisition.