Just in the past year, we’ve heard about Fox merging with Disney, Viacom and CBS, and Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade. Every industry is affected by mergers and acquisitions, but not every transaction is beneficial to vendors like staffing firms. Some provide opportunity and some create challenges. This fact usually brings an essential question to the forefront. Will this merger hurt or help my staffing business?
The Merger Hiring Freeze
When a business merges with another, this often freezes budget dollars – leading to a hiring freeze. Each company must relocate their employees into one business structure. The two businesses must fire, layoff, reallocate, and move people around in a complicated game of chess.
However, that doesn’t mean they won’t also need talent. Hiring freezes and mergers don’t stop growth or the need for extra labor in various departments. As such, staffing firms can come into the picture with a solution.
Solution: Temporary and Contract Talent
To bridge the gap from two businesses to one, the now larger company will hire temporary talent through staffing firms. These new temporary workers will be acquired by leveraging different budget dollars (dollars that aren’t frozen.)
This presents excellent opportunities for staffing firms to jump into the picture at the “start” of any M&A process. Depending on the size of the merge, you could be looking at staffing a temporary department for the merge, expanding the sales and marketing groups, or just various admin positions that pop-up throughout the merge. In order to be prepared for this type of opportunity you need to be acutely aware of your client’s goals and challenges. Knowing that there is a merger on the table, or an interest in acquiring, will allow you to position your services early, in preparation for the hiring freeze. This will give you a head start and allow you to avoid a “reactive” approach where you are trying to gain access to those other budgets after the fact.
Things to Keep in Mind:
When a business merges, they have a lot to do in a relatively short period of time. As such, they will often work a bit differently than a normal business that isn’t going through all these extra procedures.
They Might Not Know They Have a Choice
In some cases, the business that merged might not know they can use other funds to hire a temporary worker. This is where you could come in with a solution to help make their lives easier. Take a look at their business and see what help they could need. Build a custom cold-outreach email or contact and give it a try.
They’re Busy – Very Busy
If businesses contact you – or if you contact them – don’t think the answer is no just because they haven’t responded in a week. The answer could very well be yes; however, there is so much going on; they haven’t gotten to you on the checklist.
Try emailing with a kind message and let them know you’re still there when they need help expanding their team and getting more work done. There’s a chance you email them right when they’re most overwhelmed – the best time to talk to someone about getting help.
Be Prepared for Red Tape
Since you’re dealing with two businesses becoming one, you might need to be ready to talk to twice the number of people with twice the amount of policies and procedures that surround using staffing firms or getting temporary workers.
Just make sure you take meticulous notes and ask all the questions that you can to ensure that you understand their process, pain points, and how you’ll fit in over the next few weeks and months.
Need Help?
If you have an opportunity through an M&A with one of your clients, let FoxHire know! These types of opportunities can create heavier volume and increase the stress on your cash flow, compliance, payroll and other areas of your business. FoxHire’s employer of record solution can help you win the opportunity, without overwhelming your back office staff and resources. We’re here to make your life more comfortable with the right tools.
