In February, 2015, Expedia announced the acquisition of Orbitz LLC. Orbitz was a public company of approximately 1500 employees with headquarters in Chicago and offices in London, UK and Sydney, Australia. The acquisition required anti-trust approval by the U.S. Department of Justice and other countries. During this time the companies were not allowed to communicate and there was little or no communication on how long the review would take or the status. During the review period, Orbitz needed to maintain business operations and plan for both decisions; if the deal went through, or if the deal did not receive approval. From an HR perspective, we were challenged to determine how we could best retain and engage employees and keep the lines of communication as transparent as possible.
We created a 5-pillar model and plan to keep employees engaged. Each pillar had HR team member alignment and each pillar team was charged with executing activities/events. There was a learning and communication component aligned to each pillar and we had to ensure that the HR team knew what how to execute and how to accomplish our action items.
- Which tactical actions are most effective in affecting engagement during transition periods
- How to keep Leaders engaged
- How to support frontline managers in preparing them to support their teams