[Closed] Employer being bought by another (much larger) company

Bought to eliminate competition or to extend their offering?

Could be good - investment, new opportunities, integration with other areas of the bigger business.

Could be bad - cherry pick technology, staff, etc then close.

Either way expect a lot of change in terms of management reporting, decision making etc.

Is there a 'no change' clause?

Generally, don;t be seen as a blocker but try and figure out their longer term intentions and how they might impact you as an individual.

If the worst comes to the worst TUPE is your friend - if they ask you to sign a new contract make sure your start date shows as the one you started at original co.

Probably worth reading through a few years of Dilbert comic strips to equip yourself for the corporate landscape, oh and get used to not using words in the literal sense - 'corporate landscape' isn't a real place. 😉

Make sure your unicorn is ringfenced

Yep. They buy the small company out and welcome everyone to the "new", "merged" company. Then, gradually, they shut down the sites that the small company used and say you've either got to move to the new office (in Holland) or you're redundant. Joys.

In Dilbert world... Synergy! (run for your lives) .

Anyway, my experience was as employee shareholders we were recommended to sell to the new company and it would be great for everyone. Deal done, they came in and promptly kicked out half the development department.

Painful experience as took ages to go through consultation exercise even though the assessments were rigged to ensure they boot out who they wanted in the first place. I just wanted it over so I could take the money.

This happened to the company I worked for. We went from a 60 person 4 million a year to a 7500 person 2.5 billion a year company.

A lot of the support roles were made redundant which caused a lot of heartache but they were well looked after in the process.

Working for the bigger company has been interesting, took a lot of adjustment to the extra processes and being stuck in a smaller box than before but the benefits make up for this.

Yup, bought a few and merged a few and sold a few.

Make sure you are covered by TUPE.

Join a union!  tupe is your friend.

If you start finding Dilbert funny you're really in trouble.

Done this, got the t-shirt. Read up about TUPE regulations. You new employer is meant to honour all of your current T&Cs, years of service etc. This is generally the case. Watch your pension pot VERY CAREFULLY.

It is quite likely they will offer you a set of improved T&Cs to align you with whatever their corporate standard is. This may include carry-over of service.

I worked for a fairly small Southern Californian software business for many years. It was cool. The CEO wore flip-flops and hawaiian shirt. Everyone loved it. Would walk over burning coals for the company. We had dev shops all over the world, with our best stuff being from Russia. We got bought by Dell. They shafted us. Put a German in charge of the Russian teams, who then promptly cleared off (our dev shop overlooked Victory park in Moscow, Dell never understood what they had done). Russian dev shop moved to India and product set went down the toilet. All investment in products ceased and customers started to go elsewhere. Made everyone seriously unhappy with a lot moving on (you have a dress code? Go $%£# yoursleves!) Led me to have time off due to stress & eventually quit.

Thankfully Dell ran out of cash to buy VMware & EMC so had to sell the software business back to some funky Californians. From what I hear everything is now returning to normal.

Happened again when KPMG bought another software consultancy company I was working for. This time I was wise & did my homework. Found out they couldn't sell the software I work with as they had an audit conflict. Also turned out that there was also an audit conflict with our biggest customers, so I quit (rejected TUPE) at 16:59:59 before the 17:00:00 transfer deadline. Pretty much everyone else left within a couple of weeks of transferring as nobody was allowed to deal with our main customers or even download any of the software we were all skilled in.

My experience pretty much match DezB unfortunately.

Don't rely too heavily on TUPE, otherwise you'll just be redundant.

Also worth finding out what sort of deal the previous owners got. If they're on an earn out arrangement then it'll be less change but more stress as they try to hit targets without the new owners interfering.

Whatever happens time to start job hunting. Whatever loyalty you may have had to the previous owners is gone now.

All depends on the motivation for the takeover.

Got all the downsides of forms and policies bigger companies can look after you, train you and develop you a lot better and give you more opportunity.

Go in with a positive attitude and try and get the most from it.

Pretty much what wwaswas said.   Our 30 person company was taken over by a 1500 person company in 2004 then a large US Corp in 2007.

Much is to do with what you want and the effort you put in.  In my example, I was a recognised high performer my reputation coming from my small company, but had to work to ensure that reputation continued into the larger company and new broader, wider, less focussed management.  Some vanished into anoniminity and don’t work here any more.

But then, being in the larger Corp has allowed me opportunity to change my career, experience corporate power (when it works correctly) in things like marketing and travel, and many of my former colleagues found opportunity to work / move to faraway places - Aus, Fiji and America if you like that kind of thing and are doing very well.

But also, see corporate HR, potential for endless non-making of decisions, corporate language, ever changing “strategy”, adhereance to vague “policy” and different cultures across different directorates.

With my current experience I’m keen to have another look at small company’s and use my experience to take a directorate - Services or Sales - into a growth plans, but currently I’m doing enough that I don’t feel the need to change my job - I say this because I would not be in this position if I hadn’t had a corporate ladder / experience to aim at.

Expect a huge culture change, lots of petty new rules to force staff out that cant accept new way of life,TUPE is just a term, it doesnt relly have a lot of power if the new employer wants cuts or you out out you go, is your current site in a good location for a supermarket, flats or houses, have there been mysterious people walking round making measurements and taking pictures, but not actually letting on what there doing.

Usually youll be asset striped of knowledge, machinery or equipment, along with trade secrets and customer data base .

Or the new company may welcome you all give you all a pay rise and be a great new employer, but unlikely.

Don’t rely too heavily on TUPE, otherwise you’ll just be redundant.

This would be a clear unfair dismissal if the poster means that if you try to enforce TUPE you will be "made redundant"

Its posts that are made redundant not people.  TUPE is a strong legal protection for you.  If you are "made redundant" for insisting on your TUPE terms then its a clear and obvious unfair dismissal.  US companies often fail to recognise EU law on employment and fire first then face the consequences which is usually a nice fat payout for the unfairly dismissed employee.

christ, every silver lining has a cloud...

if the existing owners are still actively part of the business be aware that they might stay for a while, but sooner or later they'll go. it's common in this situation for them to go within a year.

our outfit was a wholly-owned corporation, with a uk ltd. business the boss here had a stake in. they sold up to a business that 'should' have been a good fit. the first ceo was very short lived, the second is the only man in the world i wouldn't pi55 on if he were on fire. the guy who started the business and my uk boss were both side-lined, effectively cut out of doing new development work, throwing away some of the biggest assets of the business. they left within a year IIRC. our side of the business was never fully understood and our ( looking back ) rather belligerent approach didn't help. a few years later and the US management team swooped in unannounced one day and laid off 10 out of 12, i still believe to make the balance sheet look a bit better. i was one of those laid off. good pay off though. 1 year later and i was self-employed, ironically one of my biggest customers the business that bought the one i used to work for. the ceo got the boot, and they asked me back, which turned out rather well. the business was subsequently sold on to a large corp, and we're slowly growing our office. the new owners have brought a decent pension which they have ( after a few years ) granted us access to, and we're generally left to our own devices so long as we behave ourselves. i'm probably earning more now than i would have been if the original owner was still in charge, and had the benefit of a nice cash lump sum tax free. i can't pretend everything is perfect - it isn't, but that's life, right?

one thing i learnt - the difference between an employee and a contractor, is that the contractor knows he might be out of work tomorrow. prepare for the worst, hope for the best, the reality will likely be somewhere in between.

What I meant was that if you rely on TUPE then over time your role will go, and you'll be made redundant or just leave out of frustration. It's almost impossible to prove that the business didn't just evolve that way.

Or, as my solicitor explained to me, "if we fight this in court we would probably win but they are a big company and will drag it out for years and by the time we win you'll be bankrupt and homeless."

The company I worked for at the time was bought by one of the worlds big boys in Dec 2014, we were just TUPE'd over. To start with no changes were made until the start of this year.

Then the changes have come in, some have been good for my team as individuals, some haven't and I'll try and list everything both good and bad from my view. My team of 3 were moved from under my old manger to the delivery team under a new manager who is very corporate, which isn't always the best way. He is very good at shielding us, but also burns connections just as quickly, which doesn't go down well, both with other depts and the people under him as we have to work with the people he's pi55ed off.

The good

I've received 20+% pay rises in the last 2 years.

Have a lot more options to move to.

The end of year review bonus system is now worth 10% of my annual salary, with the banding of that 10% being anywhere between 0 and 300%.

International recognition for my skills and being requested to join projects (been doing the job for 8 years, so know an awful lot of how the systems work) Same goes for my colleague

Travel options as I've been put on a training system for clients.

Health care

decent pension

Emergency situation aid (The terrorist attacks in Paris and Belguim were close to home, and the company is American)

Work from home for periods and flex hours

The bad

More red tape than you can think of

Having my role diluted, I'm not allowed to do a lot of what I used to, as thats now classed as someone elses job.

International working (trying to mesh with Aus, CET and USA time zones for meetings is a PIA)

Corporate types that have been in 1 company and can't see any other way of doing things

Red tape

Covering for people who know less that sod all and having to do all of my old job (see bad point 2)

Being asked to learn products to fill holes because they have let holes appear (the analogy I used was "just because you can speak, doesn't mean you can automatically speak 3 languages)

Oh and did I mention red tape!

The 20-odd strong consultancy I worked at (as employee number two) was acquired by an America hardware company with over 100K employees worldwide .  Let's just say there was quite some culture shock both ways, and as it was a talent acquisition they were a bit confused about what to do with the rest of the company at first.

Then again we were struggling to expand anyway whilst keeping the spirit of the company so there would have been large changes coming anyway...

In hindsight I still think I'd have agreed with the acquisition, working for a multinational is certainly different to working in a smaller company but the stability is awesome and we definitely did some awesome things with the extra support and funding.

Worked for two, excellent care companies both bought out by larger companies with little experience in the sector.

On both occasions everyone who actually cared was forced out and yes men (and women Reg) brought in to maximise profit at the expense of the clients.

Also worked for the C.I.S during their meltdown. Now that was a disgrace - much more to come out about that....

We are about to go through it. Worrying times.

Back in the day I worked for a fairly large local company that was bought by the multinational "Invensys" group.

Lots of redundancies, a few people every Friday for months on end at one point. moved buildings several times, reported to half a dozen different bosses over a period of 4 months. At times it was difficult to keep up!

i think over-all most of the production workers were ok. In our case it was the  Project department that suffered. I was fine - left of my own accord some years later.

Very unsettling for many people I remember.

ajaj

Which is why you need to be in a union!

TUPE is a strong legal protection for you.

On day one. After that, not so much.

So employers would have you believe.  Doesn't make it true tho.

A decent looking guide to TUPE here
https://www.tssa.org.uk/en/Your-union/your-workplace/employment-rights/tupe--a-guide-to-the-regulations.cfm

So employers would have you believe.  Doesn’t make it true tho.

In the real world, if they want rid, they will restructure you out of the company.

The company I work for grows mostly through acquisitions, they're experts at it and TUPE gets followed closely but as Ransos said, if you want rid of someone it's still fairly easy