Post-Acquisition Workforce Harmonisation Director — Digital Health Platforms

The mandate

The acquisition joined two digital-health workforces whose job levels, incentive measures, retirement plans, leave, equity treatment and remote-work terms differ materially across Canada and the United States. The defined problem is to create equitable and affordable transition decisions for 2,400 employees before the next reward cycle, without forcing false uniformity or disrupting regulated product delivery.

The engagement must produce a reconciled workforce-and-terms baseline, job and level crosswalk, principles paper, costed harmonisation options, individual impact engine, legal-and-payroll requirements matrix, employee communication architecture and implementation control plan. Outputs must expose protected or grandfathered terms, exchange-rate assumptions, adverse individual effects and where local law prevents a common approach.

Milestone one on 23 October 2026 is the source-certified baseline; milestone two on 20 November is the level and programme crosswalk; milestone three on 18 December comprises Steering Committee-approved design choices; milestone four on 29 January 2027 is an independently sampled individual-impact engine and communication set; final payroll-ready acceptance is due 26 February.

The work is accepted when the Chief People Officer, finance controller, Canadian and US counsel, and both payroll owners confirm that populations tie to source, costs reconcile to the deal baseline, sampled employee outcomes calculate correctly, legal exceptions are documented, configuration requirements are testable and managers can explain the transitions using approved materials. A policy deck without individual implementation evidence is incomplete.

The client will provide HRIS, payroll, equity, benefits and employment-term data; existing job architecture; transaction commitments; local opinions; and designated decision makers. The consultant owns analysis, option design and artefact integrity but cannot amend employee terms, issue communications, select benefit providers, give legal advice or approve exceptions on management's behalf.

Why this is external work

Each legacy reward team understandably defends its own programmes, leaving the combined company without a neutral fact base. Internal capacity is also consumed by annual enrolment and transaction retention activity. An external director can arbitrate comparable evidence, reveal employee-level consequences and produce implementation specifications without inheriting a permanent programme constituency.

What you will own

• Certify the employee, programme, eligibility, cost and contractual-term baseline by reconciling HRIS, payroll, provider and transaction sources.
• Build the job-and-level crosswalk using role scope, decision impact, knowledge depth and market reference rather than mechanical title matching.
• Develop costed choices for cash, incentives, retirement, health, leave, equity transitions and remote terms, showing affected populations and legal constraints.
• Construct the individual-impact engine with governed inputs, currency treatment, protection periods, exception flags and reproducible employee-level calculations.
• Facilitate Steering Committee decisions through explicit principles, affordability ranges, talent risks and rejected alternatives recorded for later challenge.
• Specify payroll, HRIS, provider, manager and communication changes with owners, test cases, dependencies and cutover controls for each jurisdiction.
• Transfer the approved design book, impact files, exception register, test inventory and employee-listening measures to internal implementation leaders.

Candidate qualifications

• Directed workforce or total-rewards harmonisation after a completed Canada–US acquisition affecting more than 1,000 employees.
• Can evidence a source-reconciled individual impact model spanning salary, incentive, benefits, retirement, equity or leave transitions.
• Built job-level crosswalks that survived business-leader challenge and avoided both title matching and automatic preference for the acquirer's architecture.
• Quantified harmonisation cost with employer taxes, foreign exchange, protection periods, attrition risk and implementation timing reconciled to finance.
• Translated design decisions into payroll, HRIS, provider and manager test cases, including proof that sampled employee outcomes were correct before launch.
• Worked directly with employment counsel and employee-communications leaders while keeping technical, legal and management accountabilities distinct.

Non-negotiables

• Available across the five-month calendar for Toronto presence and monthly Montreal and Boston working sessions.
• Free of financial relationships with current benefit, payroll, compensation-survey or HR technology providers under consideration.
• Will accept final payment against employee-level calculation, legal-exception and payroll-readiness tests.
• Has owned post-acquisition harmonisation at enterprise director or partner-equivalent level, beyond benefits brokerage or programme PMO work.

1. 49 words maximum. Which source discrepancy most often distorts an acquired workforce baseline, and how have you resolved it?
2. 49 words maximum. Describe an individual-impact test that caused you to change a seemingly equitable harmonisation policy.
3. 49 words maximum. What evidence would you require from both payroll teams before recommending final acceptance?