Everyone is looking at the recent announcement Microsoft unfriendly take-over of Yahoo with great curiosity. And why not; they make two great conglomerates to “pick on”? When I read a recent post on IR Web Report that they considered that blogging by employees as a great source of determining corporate culture, I was intrigued.

But with the advent of employee bloggers on the open Internet, especially those who work for leading technology companies, investors may be getting valuable insights into at least one factor that can make or break a successful deal: corporate culture.

They went on to predict a loss of 10% of Yahoo employees should the merger go through. I felt compelled to comment as follows:

Losing 5-10% of employee in a Merger or Acquisition is the tip of the iceberg. Most healthy companies experience about the same percentage in annual turnover. Within 3 months of most acquisitions the impact is usually far greater and not just in regards to employee turnover, but in terms of customer retention, productivity and knowledge management.

A good cultural match is essential to most mergers. However, even with good match, most mergers still fail. Our experience is inline with most studies in this area shows that post-merger people integration and new identity creation is essential. It is not simply a matter of handing out mission statements and coffee cups with the company logo on it. How and when the integration takes place are critical factors. People need to be actively involved and involved quickly after the merger announcement.

Our White paper, Leading Cross-Cultural Re-engagement is a complete discussion on why most organizations fail and how to enable rapid and effective re-engagement. You can confidentially request the white paper at mergers@aweber.com

On the same note, while blogging is a wonderful way to gain an idea of the pulse of how an organization may feel about a merger and is a highly impactful communication tool… large scale change management processes and methods allow organizations to involve large numbers of people in rapid process and organization change that can rapidly develop a new identity, employee re-engagement.