On the day it was announced that The PNC Financial Services Group Inc. would purchase National City Bank, S. Kay Geiger immediately rallied her employees — new and old — around the fact that the company would be stronger moving forward. Her message was this: Here were two of the oldest businesses in the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky region, and combined, they would be a superior entity than they were as independent parts. That same message went out to customers and to the community, and throughout the merger, that message never faltered.
Any acquisition and merger brings questions of uncertainty for employees and customers. But your job as the leader is to provide honest communication and keep them focused on the bigger picture — one unified company.
As regional president, Geiger saw success by using continuous communication and a strategy of teamwork.
“It’s collaboration,” she says. “It’s two companies’ minds coming together, two companies’ commitments coming together, two companies’ customers coming together, two companies’ employees coming together. Each one of those individually becomes a very specific way in which you can deliver the message, but in no case were the messages in any of those places different.”
Here is how Geiger integrated two banks and 1,600 employees with a universal message.