Management posted memos and maintained a frequently asked questions list. Calif. KRI's experience is a typical and successful example of how a company with a mature intranet can use the communications power of its internal Web to reassure employees during a usually unsettling time. Eric Benhamou, a master merger of network companies, would not have done it differently. A merger creates enormous uncertainty among employees, even if it's accompanied by excitement and anticipation. Worse, management has limited time to appease nervous employees, says Benhamou, chairman and CEO of 3Com Corp., which relied extensively on its intranet while integrating its latest acquisition, U.S. Robotics, last June.
Employees are typically willing to stay in limbo for a little while.
But if that state prolongs itself, they will check out. Intranets provide a way to very quickly and often interactively communicate across the entire entity. In addition to using 3Community internally, 3Com built an extranet for the two companies' management teams to use when making plans and exchanging information. The Securities and Exchange Commission permits joint business planning activities prior to legal merging of assets, so the prospective partners started coordinating their shared business. They assigned cross-departmental teams to tackle issues from manufacturing to combining financial systems and human resources.