Works-Council M&A People Integration Expert — Advanced Materials

The mandate

A recently signed acquisition combines overlapping commercial, laboratory and enabling functions in France and Germany, but the transaction model assumes organisation savings before employee-representative processes have tested the facts. The bounded problem is to create a lawful, credible and operationally sequenced people-integration package without pre-determining consultation outcomes or allowing uncertainty to paralyse critical-talent decisions.

The consultant must deliver an organisation-design evidence book, affected-population baseline, works-council and social-dialogue strategy, harmonisation cost model, critical-talent safeguards, implementation sequence and decision-ready leadership papers. Each artefact must distinguish proposed direction from consulted outcome, trace employee data to governed sources and connect country obligations to the transaction's synergy calendar.

Milestone one, due at the end of week three, is the reconciled employee baseline and consultation-risk map. Week seven closes with organisation options and a costed harmonisation range; week eleven requires complete information-and-consultation packs plus tested management responses; week sixteen concludes with updated decisions, implementation controls, employee-relations log and transfer to country owners.

Acceptance rests with the Chief People Officer, French labour counsel, German employee-relations lead and Integration Committee. They must confirm that populations reconcile to payroll, alternatives and social consequences are evidenced, no required consultation has been treated as a formality, harmonisation costs tie to finance, and country teams can run the approved sequence without consultant authorship. Submission alone will not release the final fee.

The client will supply transaction assumptions, payroll and contract data, organisational charts, collective agreements, legal advice, synergy models and named country leads with access to management. The expert controls method, artefacts and facilitation but does not make dismissal decisions, negotiate binding agreements, provide reserved legal opinions or speak in place of management during statutory consultation.

Why this is external work

Internal HR leaders helped build the synergy case and are now perceived as advocates for a predetermined design. They also lack capacity to reconcile two workforce datasets while continuing normal employee relations. A politically neutral specialist can expose unsupported assumptions, equip management for genuine consultation and keep transaction economics aligned with lawful, implementable choices.

What you will own

• Reconcile headcount, employment status, location, cost, representation, collective coverage and critical-role data into one controlled affected-population baseline.
• Develop organisation options with documented business rationale, selection dependencies, social consequences, implementation timing and viable alternatives for consultation.
• Map French and German information, consultation and co-determination steps to decision gates, ensuring language never suggests an outcome was fixed prematurely.
• Quantify harmonisation choices across salary, bonus, benefits, working time, grading, mobility and transition protection with finance-agreed assumptions.
• Prepare works-council information packs, management question banks and evidence appendices that answer foreseeable challenge without overstating certainty.
• Design critical-talent measures whose eligibility, duration, cost, manager accountability and employee-relations consequences can withstand representative scrutiny.
• Transfer the consultation record, amended decision log, implementation calendar, payroll controls and unresolved country matters to designated internal owners.

Candidate qualifications

• Led people integration for a completed French–German acquisition involving works councils, organisation overlap and material reward or employment-term differences.
• Can evidence a consultation plan that changed management's initial design while preserving an implementable business outcome and lawful decision sequence.
• Built affected-population and workforce-cost baselines that reconciled payroll, HRIS, finance and transaction assumptions across more than one jurisdiction.
• Prepared information-and-consultation materials with local labour counsel and personally equipped senior leaders to answer detailed employee-representative challenge.
• Modelled harmonisation, retention, mobility and restructuring costs with timing, employer charges, contingencies and payroll implementation consequences.
• Delivered country-owner handover after consultation rather than remaining as open-ended employee-relations capacity through execution.

Non-negotiables

• Available for the full sixteen-week schedule, including three Paris onsite days weekly and fortnightly France–Germany travel.
• Independent of the buyer's deal adviser, labour counsel, target management and any employee-representative advisory body involved.
• Will preserve genuine consultation and refuse documents that present an unconsulted workforce decision as final.
• Has led board-visible people integration at director or CHRO-1 level, not solely data-room, communications or programme coordination.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe one consultation that materially changed an integration design and how you protected the underlying business objective.
2. 49 words maximum. How would you reconcile an affected-population baseline when HRIS, payroll and transaction headcount disagree?
3. 49 words maximum. Which acceptance evidence proves a management team is ready to conduct consultation without consultant dependence?