 Students, we are discussing merger and acquisition phases and in that we are discussing about the HR implications. In this topic, we are going to talk about the HR implications of the implementation phase. You can see that this is the fourth and final stage of the MNA integration process. This is the implementation phase. In implementation phase, the entire plans which have been chalked out in the previous phases are implemented into action. Now in the implementation phase, the responsibilities of the HR department and the HR challenges faced by the organization will obviously evolve into new stage. What you would need to be doing is managing ongoing change, especially cultural change. You have looked at the differences in culture. You have in the integration planning phase, you have chalked out the strategy for cultural integration. Now you are in the implementation phase, you will be implementing those strategies and trying to smooth out the process of change, particularly the cultural change. You would be managing employee communication according to the plans that you have chalked out, how the communication is going to take place, whether you are going to convert into electronic communication or you are going to convert into manual communication, although you were communicating electronically in your more developed country. That is going to be the communication strategy and implementing that communication strategy is going to take place in this phase. Then in this phase, the HR people would be concerned about advising management on dealing with people issues. People issues are going to come up. You are mixing cultures, you are hiring new people, you are letting go of people. It is going to be a pretty dramatic phase and people issues are definitely going to come up and a number of people would be finding themselves anxious, insecure, they would be finding themselves with a lack of orientation, not knowing what to do. Do as HR managers would be responsible for advising others how to manage these people's issues. Then another aspect is to align your HR policies, particularly the total rewards policy in your compensation packages. You need to align your HR policies because earlier you are two companies working separately with different compensation packages, with different reward packages. You need to align all that, particularly in many cases you would see that there would be tax differences. People expatriates coming to work in your country, they would be having issues of how they would be managing their pay. Someone would want to get paid in their parent country, someone would want to get paid right there, they would have to deal with the tax issues. You need to align that what they are getting in compensation is aligned between the two companies. Then you would be monitoring the process of organizational and people-related integration activities. The HR is not just concerned about the integration of HR because HR human resource is the main resource of the organization and you need to be careful that the organizational integration is based on human integration and therefore the human resource department would be specifically responsible for monitoring this process. Then you need to capture the synergies of human resource. You need to ensure that the two cultures coming together, it is creating a synergistic effect which means that the combination of the two is greater than the addition of the two. That means that it is rewarding more for both the organizations by coming together. What are the synergies which are being exploited by bringing together the two companies and particularly in the HR arena? What is the benefit of this? What is the synergy that is being achieved? How are people working in a better way? How are people working together? How are you getting synergy in the organization? You need to ensure that. Then another very much important aspect of HR department is to make this entire process a source of learning. You have merged or you have acquired two cultures, you have integrated tasks. You entered a new market. How did you do that? You need to make it as a learning example. What are the reasons that it was successful? What were the problems? What were the issues? What were the reasons for success? What were the reasons of lag? What were the reasons of, for example, if there is failure, what are the reasons for that? That has to become a source of learning for future mergers and acquisitions, not just in your organization but for other organizations as well. What made a merger acquisition successful? The HR department is responsible for analyzing this entire process of success or in other words, the process of failure. We have to make it a source of learning. These are the various different activities and HR implications for the phase of implementation in a merger or acquisition.