Deloitte & Touche

Definition of Problem: The problem faced by Deloitte & Touche is how to best manage the merger with Andersen in order to move beyond being two merged organizations into a unified, market-leading organization. Deloitte must minimize the negative effects the change will have on the productivity of the organization and they must have a focus on minimizing the effects on current clients. It is important for Deloitte to create one corporate culture and focus on creating a cohesive team out of a currently divided workforce if they want the new company to be successful. Deloitte must make the Andersen employees feel welcomed and valued by the company while ensuring that their current employees don't feel swept aside. Causes: Some causes of Deloitte's problems include: †¢ Employee fear of change – People naturally have a fear of change. Deloitte's people will naturally feel threatened by the influx of new, unfamiliar people to the organization, particularly as they are coming from an organization that was heralded as being the best in the industry. It is important for Deloitte to properly manage these fears. Difficulty of maintaining corporate culture – Any company that increases their workforce through a merger with a rival firm feels a threat to their corporate culture. It is important for firms to determine before a merger whether the corporate cultures fit together. Two firms cannot merge and adopt one culture, the resulting culture must be a blend of the two cultures. †¢ Inadequacies in communication – The merger w as completed very quickly (in less than 2 months) and as a result the merger was communicated very quickly to employees. HR is responsible for communicating current policies to new and old employees. There has been very little upward communication until the Pulse Surveys and Deloitte employees are feeling like they are being lost in the shuffle. †¢ Lack of team building – The four phases of team building are forming, norming, storming, performing. All teams will go through this cycle in one way or another. Deloitte must recognize this and help the team through the forming, norming and storming phases in a way that will have the least negative impact on the company, so the team can get to the performing stage quickly. The consequences of failing to do this are that clients from Andersen will change to another firm and clients from Deloitte may feel neglected and will leave the firm for that reason. †¢ Fears of past business practices – Andersen was involved in the Enron scandal and as a result, individuals from the US branch were criminally indicted. The Andersen brand was destroyed and Deloitte management have a fear that the fallout may affect Deloitte since the Andersen professionals are now members of the Deloitte organization. It is important for the new Deloitte to clearly distance themselves from the Enron scandal and the fallout from that scandal. Strategic Issues 1. Hasty Integration – Deloitte people feel, through the pulse survey, that management is in a haste to integrate and is forgetting about their own people 2. Tension – Deloitte Touche is not sure how to manage tensions that might arise between the two cultures while integrating. 3. No defined direction – There is no defined direction that the integration management is attempting to incorporate the two very different cultures. Developed Alternatives Gathering feedback on a more personal level – Instead of using the pulse survey to gather feedback, Deloitte could possibly do something on a more personal level. The employees need to have a clear sense of where they fall in the big picture and where they are heading. This allows them to feel they are apart of the great change and consequently will devote themselves wholeheartedly. Examples can include asking lower level managers to have brief meetings with a group of employees voicing concerns and questions. Lower level managers can take notes and submit them to the integration team. Once the team has determined that creating happy employees is important on a personal level thus helping them to overcome the fear of change, and they have formulated the vision for the merging they can develop specific systems that will support, empower and inspire the employees and ensure they are willing to support the change to the best of their ability Mentorship – Mentoring is a valuable option for positively influencing the employees’ commitment because it sends a message that Deloitte & Touche is interested in career growth and development of their employees; these employees can make valuable contributions and facilitate a smooth integration. Assigning a mentor to counsel/tutor employees about the need for change, the change process, ways of adapting or adjusting to the change will help them get a better understanding of the reasons for the integration and allow them to have a more vested interest in the success of the organization. Forcing employees to quickly accept the new emerging culture immediately definitely won’t deter the tensions. This transition must take place at a slow process so employees do not feel pushed and overwhelmed into accepting the new practices and rules. It will be difficult to transform their fears and attitude in favor of the intended change until the underlying motives are understood. Seminars and Workshops – These seminars and workshops  will be for both management and employees; management first, to accumulate the necessary knowledge, skills and abilities for leading the change process. These  skills and techniques will be used to guide employees to quickly adapt to the change. This will allow  the entire organization  to adjust faster and become more flexible. Instead of using an integration team, a certain set of managers can be the head of definite departments, groups, locations, and divisions. These managers must act more like coaches and will express the benefits and rewards of merging the two companies. Consequently, a review will then be conducted to get feedback on how the whole integration process is going. Assuming there is a positive feedback, management will slowly incorporate both cultures into one, while not rushing the process or ignoring what employees concerns are. Evaluate Alternative The alternative that would be the best fit Deloitte & Touche is to have a mentor to solve the current situation. Mentor is better than other two alternatives simply because mentoring is kind of a personal enhancement strategy through which employees facilitates the development of another by sharing known resources, expertise, culture, values and skills. By paring up with Andersen employees, mentor can develop employees while helping them make a greater contribution to the new organization, and help them to become more productive in his or her current position. Deloitte & Touche not only can increase employee’s morale, but also can increase organizational productivity and build up employee’s skill and knowledge while attaining goals for career development. Mentoring is about the qualitative and subjective of employees’ job which dealing with frustration, handing conflict, and behaving with humility. Mentoring can involve an exchange of knowledge and information that can be evaluative nature to assess the assimilation of the new employee in his or her new role. It can help the new employee quickly come up to speed and shorter the learning curve as a contributor within the organization. It is important to make sure employees do not feel to be pushed and forced. Employee’s understanding of motives is the fundamental requirement to have a successful organizational merger. Implementation Phase one Deloitte has to develop a mentorship team and mentorship program for new and old Deloitte employees. A mentorship team will need time to conduct research and develop new practices. This team should be formed and trained and be ready to mentor within six months. Phase two Deliotte must allocate the necessary resources to the mentorship team and program. These resources include not only financial but personnel as well. This will be done right away. Phase three Within the first year Deloitte has to develop a new corporate culture that integrates the best practices and policies from both Anderson and Deliotte. The Mentorship team has to have a concrete culture to implement in order to be successful. Phase four Deloitte must implement a proper evaluation plan to determine if the mentorship program is working. The team can take surveys and other types of qualitative measures to determine how well the mentorship is working. The evaluation can begin after the first year and continue until the end of the program.