Short answer
A year after a merger, integration plans report systems migrated and structures combined, but the work may still run on two sets of habits. Ask people from both legacy companies three things:
- how a shared process actually runs today;
- where they still do things the old way, and why;
- the last time the two approaches clashed.
Keep each legacy company as a visible group in the findings. The same process can feel integrated to one side and imposed on the other. The output is a short list of processes and habits that need direct attention, not a culture score.
Why integration dashboards miss it
Integration programmes track what can be counted: systems migrated, entities merged, roles mapped. Those milestones say little about whether a sales team from company A and an operations team from company B hand work to each other smoothly. The friction shows up in workarounds, duplicate approvals and phrases like "we used to just…", and it rarely reaches a dashboard.
The CIPD employee voice factsheet describes employee voice as the ways people communicate their views on matters that affect their working lives. After a merger, many of those matters are the changed processes themselves. The people working through them are the ones who can say where they break.
What to ask about
| Topic | What it reveals | Example question |
|---|---|---|
| A shared process today | Whether there is one way of working, or two | “Walk me through how an order from a former company B customer gets approved now.” |
| Old habits | Where people still use legacy tools, contacts or steps | “What do you still do the way you did before the merger, and why?” |
| The last clash | Where the two approaches meet | “Tell me about the last time something got stuck between the two teams.” |
| Decisions | Who decides now, and whether people know | “When you need a decision on pricing, who do you go to?” |
| What would help | Practical changes | “What would make that process work better for you?” |
Avoid asking people to judge the other company or its culture. Ask about the work; the culture shows up in the examples.
Keep both sides visible
Report every finding by legacy company, and by function where it matters. "8 of 14 people describe two approval routes for discounts" is useful. "8 of 14, including 7 of the 8 from company B" is more useful: it tells you whose process survived and who is working around it.
Include people who joined after the merger. They have no legacy habits and can describe what a newcomer finds confusing. That is often the clearest view of where integration has not happened.
A fictional example: two sales operations
A fictional industrial-supplies company acquired a smaller competitor fourteen months ago, and the integration programme closed six months ago. The commercial director asks: "Are the merged sales and customer service teams really working as one, where do they clash, and which old habits are still around?"
Sixteen people answer: eight from the acquiring company, six from the acquired one and two hired since. Their accounts:
- Nine describe two quoting processes still running in parallel: one in the new CRM, and one in a spreadsheet the acquired team kept.
- Five of the six acquired staff say the spreadsheet survived because the CRM cannot handle their customers' framework agreements.
- Both recent hires describe not knowing which process to use for which customer.
- Four of the eight acquiring staff did not know the spreadsheet existed.
The finding is not "the acquired team resists change". It is that the CRM migration did not cover a real requirement, framework agreements, so one team built a workaround the other cannot see. The director asks the CRM team to scope framework agreements and makes one person accountable for the decision.
When to ask
| Timing | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Before day one | Understand each company's processes before they are combined |
| Three to six months in | Catch early friction while change is still active |
| A year in | See which habits survived and which processes are genuinely shared |
Asking the same topics each time allows comparison. The organisational development guide covers working at a larger scale, and the guide to qualitative HR data covers analysing the answers.
Be careful with what people fear
Mergers create uncertainty about roles. People may hesitate to say their old process was better if they think it marks them as resistant. Be explicit about three things: who reads the answers, that the study is about processes rather than people, and that nothing said will be used in decisions about individuals. The guide to who sees what in an employee interview study has a checklist.
Where Lontra fits
With Lontra, you write the integration question in a sentence, approve the topics and invite people from both companies. Each has a short private conversation, on any device, without an account. Lontra follows up on what they say and can read a spreadsheet or screenshot they share, such as the workaround they still use.
Findings show how many people described each point, where they disagree and what is still unknown, each linked to the conversations behind it, so you can see which group said what. Deep Study can follow up with a colleague people name, such as the person who still maintains the old process.
It does not measure culture. It does not replace the consultation that organisational change may require either.
Look for the processes, not the culture
A year after a merger, "culture" is usually a set of specific processes and habits that were never reconciled. Find them by asking the people who do the work, report them by legacy company, and fix them one process at a time.
Frequently asked questions
- When should employees be interviewed after a merger?
- Ideally before day one, a few months in and around a year in, with the same topics each time. A year in is late, but useful for seeing which habits survived.
- Should post-merger interviews ask about culture?
- Ask about how work is done, who decides and where it gets stuck. Cultural differences appear in those examples, and they are easier to act on than answers to a general question about culture.
- How should findings be reported after a merger?
- By legacy company and function, so it is clear whose process survived and who is working around it. Include people hired since the merger as a separate group.