Janet Brewer
Chief People Officer, Arcfield
When Arcfield was initially set up, the company planned its infrastructure to be ready for growth and acquiring other businesses. This includes the systems for HR, communications and employee engagement, all overseen by Janet Brewer. So when Arcfield recently announced its first acquisition of Strategic Technology Consulting, Brewer made it a top priority to ensure there was good communication, teamwork and a sense of belonging from the very beginning.
To achieve this, her team worked under an unusually tight deadline to not only make the acquisition public but also prepare for and hold an all-employee town hall to welcome its newest employees. Additionally, aligning IT and HR systems was key to the strategy. In just a week, with help from the IT department, Brewer’s team made sure employees could work together on Microsoft Teams, find each other’s contact information in Outlook and use The Arcway, which is Arcfield’s online platform designed to unify employees and reflect the company’s culture.
Why Watch
Between now and the end of the year, Brewer and her team will concentrate on seamlessly merging STC into Arcfield’s HR systems, while keeping the qualities that made STC successful. As the company is likely to acquire more businesses in the future, the team will use what it learned from this experience to make sure its approach can be easily applied to new acquisitions, ensuring success each time.
“Most of us in GovCon are no strangers to M&A,” Brewer said. “And while it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day and the task at hand, it is most important, at least in my opinion, to keep the employees at the forefront and make sure that the ‘one company’ promise starts from day one.”