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By TJ (May 2008 Issue)
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New-look website makes life easier

Purchasers of training will find it easier to contact providers, thanks to a newly revamped website.

TrainerBase; the Association for Learning Practitioners, has redesigned its website to make it easier for visitors to find their way around and for organisations looking for training to make contact with providers.

The site – at www.trainerbase.co.uk – has been divided up into sections, or ‘themes’, for training providers, purchasers and association members. There is also a new facility allowing purchasers to advertise their l&d requirements directly to providers. Launching the new-look site, Peter Mayes, the association’s founder and chief executive, said: “This new interface will make it much easier for visitors to the site to find their way around.

“Over the last five years the site has grown significantly in size and complexity and, now that we have changed to an association, we needed to divide the navigation into specific routes dependant upon a visitor’s reasons for coming to the site.

“We also realised that the site did not encourage purchasers looking for new trainers to use it; the new ‘add an opportunity’ facility will make it much easier.”

CIPD sets out HR’s vital integration role in successful M&As

Acquisitive organisations must put mechanisms in place to enable them to learn from the companies they take over.

And HR practitioners can play a vital role in the success of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by ensuring that knowledge and practices are transferred and integrated within a new organisational structure.

That’s according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), which has released a report emphasising the substantial contribution that HR departments can make to successful M&As by integrating employees and working practices.

International Mergers and Acquisitions: How can HR Play a Strategic Role? reveals that 60 per cent of organisations with foreign owners have made deliberate attempts to share and integrate with the knowledge of their acquired companies in the UK.

CIPD international manager Frances Wilson said: “Mergers and acquisitions transcend national cultures, often making the integration process challenging and problematic. HR can
play a key role in making this integration a success for employees at all levels by, in particular, leading the transfer of knowledge so that organisations’ personnel learn from the operations they acquire.

“If time is taken to understand, and engage with, an acquired firm’s employee practices, organisations will be able to effectively share ideas and gain their new employees’ cooperation. This requires an acquisition strategy from HR to make sure that the mechanisms for learning are in place.”

The CIPD research was carried out by Dr Tony Edwards, of Kings College in London, and uses a range of case studies to identify five key steps for a successful M&A. HR can play a major role in ensuring a smooth transition by:

  • ensuring a commitment at the top of the organisation, as well as a willingness to learn by those at the centre, to welcoming input from the acquired firm;
  • integrating key staff involved in the acquisition into common processes so that they have a voice in the new firm;
  • ensuring an incremental approach which allows the acquired firm to keep positive practices intact, so that learning across the new organisation is possible; and
  • allowing time for knowledge to be properly identified, digested, reproduced and shared.

Satish Pradhan is executive vice president of group HR at Indian conglomerate Tata Sons, which has acquired nearly 100 companies around the world, including Corus and Jaguar/Landrover in the UK. He said: “Leadership is about taking the view that ‘people capabilities’ are a source of competitive advantage. In mergers and acquisitions, this is reflected in a business perspective that thinks ‘post merger integration’ before ‘due diligence’.

“When we scan, explore, consider or even begin to think about a potential M&A candidate, we are already thinking about the future combined entity. This has huge implications for the way we approach and address issues right through the whole process, from scanning to integration.”

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