HR professionals must recognise there is “no perfect solution” in merging and integrating organisational cultures, Mark Adams (pictured), HR director for Santander UK, has said.

Spanish bank Santander’s acquisitions of the UK’s Abbey, Alliance & Leicester, Bradford & Bingley and GE Money’s card and auto financing businesses happened over a comparatively short period of time.

Under such conditions, Adams told an audience of fellow HR professionals at the Human Resources Forum 2010 aboard cruise ship Arcadia, “you have to move incredibly quickly” to begin the processes of adaptation and integration.

Employees must be shown the benefits that will emerge “at the end of the tunnel”, he said. “The learning was, you make a decision, you stick with it, and move on.”

When more than one acquisition is involved in integrating with a parent organisation, “it is more complicated than I ever would have thought”, Adams said.

Also critical was to understand that “change is going to happen. People won’t be delighted but if you do simple things, [such as] listen to them, and do them relentlessly, it does help bring them with you”, Adams said.

A measure that helped to win support from former Abbey branch managers for technology efficiency changes was to take them to branches in Spain, where the local managers spoke English, who could show them the benefits of implementing them.       

He acknowledged that achieving consistency across all of Santander’s UK component organisations has been difficult. “I don’t think we’ve got it quite right yet,” he said. “I think there is still more work to be done” for all of the elements to work together as a single global company.