Table of Contents 6 2012 OVATION Awards Winning Entries

and Mail following the amalgamation announcement the key to a successful amalgamation is
communication as “a merger brings change management skills to the fore. There are all sorts of
uncertainties and questions, and even if you don’t have the answers, you have to determine who are the
stakeholders are what they need to know. Because if we don’t tell them, they are going to make
assumptions…”
Using key learning garnered from the legacy merger that created Meridian in 2005, Meridian also decided
to use face‐to‐face leader‐lead communications when communicating to former DCU employees. This
would help build a two‐way stream of conversation and answer questions from new staff, but more
importantly it would put a face to Meridian – a credit union that many of these new employees had never
been exposed to.
Goals and Objectives:
Meridian’s corporate communications team developed a comprehensive plan that featured two main
audiences and phases. The first component of the plan would focus solely on amalgamation
announcement to current Meridian employees. For current Meridian employees, the communications
objective was to inform them of the amalgamation, explain the benefits of amalgamation to the credit
union overall, stress that no current Meridian employee would lose their job as a result of the
amalgamation and explain that it was business as usual until the full conversion has taken place.
The second component of the communication plan focused on the new Meridian employees (former DCU
employees). Communications to this specific audience geared around educating them about Meridian and
providing insight to Meridian’s culture. A successful integration of the two credit unions would be largely
dependent on the pace of change for the former DCU employees and their ability to digest new
information, concepts and expectations while making the “mindset shift” to Meridian. As former DCU
employees will have to absorb massive amounts of information and cope with significant changes in
policies, products and technologies, internal communications would play a key role in easing the change
management until the full conversion of DCU into Meridian (scheduled to be completed in spring 2012).
A comprehensive employee communications plan was developed to support current Meridian
employees and former DCU employees, also referred to as new Meridian employees. The following
objectives were created:
1. Following the proposed amalgamation announcement on March 1, 2011, ensure all current
Meridian employees understand the benefits of the proposed amalgamation and have the tools
they need to effectively answer Members questions and concerns.
2. Provide Branch Managers and Assistant Branch Managers (leaders) with the right communication
tools so they can effectively reinforce key messages and support their teams.
3. Ensure all new Meridian employees (former DCU employees) understand and embrace Meridian’s
approach to superior, personalized service and feel adequately welcomed and engaged at Meridian.
Success Measurement:
The success of the objectives 1 and 2 outlined above was measured through the post‐evaluation survey,
where if 80 per cent or more of employees answered strongly agree/ agree to the corresponding
question, it was considered successful.
Success of the third objective would be measured by the annual employee survey (executed by an
independent third party). In the survey, former DCU employees were asked to answer 12 questions
regarding their engagement on a 5‐point scale with 1 being extremely dissatisfied and 5 being extremely
satisfied. This objective would be classified as successful if the former DCU employees scored a
collective employee engagement score of 4/5.