Mergers That Work: Using On-the-Job Feedback to Unify Teams And Culture

Whether you’re merging with another company, opening a new location, or expanding internationally, success hinges on one critical factor: establishing your culture and best practices consistently across every new business unit. Here we discuss how to use on-the-job feedback to unify teams and culture.

Starbucks is the prime example of consistency at scale. But their ability to deliver the same quality of coffee, service, and store ambiance isn’t magic—it’s the result of systematic communication between regional managers, location managers, and their teams. The crucial mode of communication? Regular, effective feedback.

Feedback is the machine that builds and maintains cultural standards while driving employee engagement. The data shows it. Nearly half of highly-engaged workers receive feedback at least once a week (Workleap), and higher engagement directly improves KPIs as diverse as customer satisfaction to safety incidents to product quality (Gallup)

As a talent leader during expansion, your challenge isn’t just teaching feedback skills—it’s changing behaviours across an expanding organisation. Traditional classroom training alone won’t drive this change, since 70% of learning happens on the job. Innovative organisations are now taking a different approach: integrating bite-sized feedback activities into daily work, where real learning happens. When these activities are personalised for each manager and measured against business outcomes, you can transform feedback from a “nice to have” into a proven driver of successful expansion. Here’s the data-driven approach that makes it possible.

The Challenges of Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers often bring together diverse corporate cultures, operational practices, and employee expectations. In these scenarios, two-way feedback is crucial. In my former company, I helped navigate us through multiple acquisitions, both as an acquirer and a target. As the CEO, I can attest to the complexities involved in these transitions.

It begins with humility, really—the willingness to receive feedback from stakeholders of all levels (Thanks for the Feedback is a great resource on receiving feedback). Equally important is caring enough to provide constructive feedback that helps employees adapt to new systems and processes. Without this mutual exchange of information, organisations risk creating confusion and dissatisfaction among employees, which can ultimately affect business outcomes.

The Role of On-the-Job Training

Most know that 70% of learning happens in the flow of work, but few deliver training primarily through on-the-job activities. There’s a real opportunity to refocus L&D initiatives on the most effective learning environment. By embedding training into daily workflow, employees can practice their feedback skills in real-world situations.

It’s the real-world practice that drives behaviour change. People learn by doing. Toddlers learn to walk one wobbly step at a time. Language learners struggle through difficult pronunciation one syllable at a time until they achieve fluency. It’s the same with feedback skills. Each bite-sized, on-the-job training activity builds strength and skill in giving and receiving feedback.

To effectively build feedback skills and support consistency across locations, organisations need to focus on behaviour change through on-the-job training rather than relying solely on formal classroom-style training.

Fostering a Culture of Excellence

Frequent feedback has the potential to kickstart a culture of excellence across multiple locations and teams. Bringing together two different cultures into a new unified culture can sometimes lead to regrettable turnover. Open feedback is crucial to the transition. The problem is that many suffer from “ruinous empathy:” about 70% of managers fear that giving direct feedback will lead to hurt feelings (Kim Scott, Radical Candour, p. 14). So, they don’t do it, which can mean the teams don’t come together to form a unified company culture.

Creating a culture where feedback is valued requires focused effort. Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why, says, “Feedback should be a tool for growth, not criticism. We need to create cultures in which everyone believes feedback is for their benefit” That’s the goal of this type of training.

Training for Effective Feedback: 3 Pillars

Many talent leaders are refocusing training to prioritise on-the-job, activity-based training. Through my work with many of these leaders and organisations, we’ve identified and implemented three key pillars to make this training most effective – to deliver training that drives behaviour change. Even if you can’t implement all of it, taking just a few steps will significantly help drive success through mergers and acquisitions.

Learning by Doing

Focus on the place where most learning happens–on the job–by implementing activity-based training.

Training on the job is an untapped opportunity, since most training requires employees to stop their work and attend/consume training content
Learning activities practised in the flow of work don’t disrupt the day-to-day
The Forgetting Curve reminds us that People forget quickly, so consistent practice over time solidifies new strategies and skills as habits – this is training that actually changes behaviour

Personalise the Training

The most effective activity-based training will account for learners’ unique personality differences, providing them with the most relevant activities. It will also support business-level objectives.

At a minimum, tailor activities to roles (e.g., managers, frontline workers, etc.)
At best, assigned activities can be tailored to each learner, accounting for preferences, strengths, and weaknesses
The most efficient way to achieve this is using AI models to predict the best content for each learner

Measure the Results

To prove the business-level impact of your activity-based feedback training, you’ll have to measure at several points.

Measure reaction data after each activity; capture before and after data, including learner and manager anecdotes.
Measure longer term behaviour change and business metrics, for example, what managers witness in employee behaviour and what annual engagement surveys say about the effect of feedback training on engagement
Where possible, use A/B testing (like in medical trials), where a small holdout group receives a different form of training from the main group, and then the results are compared.

Conclusion

At crucial business moments, such as mergers and acquisitions, fostering a culture of excellence across business units is critical, and effective feedback can help you achieve it. To develop feedback skills, consider activity-based training that enables employees to practice in the context of their daily work. If possible, personalise the training pathway for each person to achieve the greatest effect. Finally, measure the results. This approach allows you to prove out the business impact of all your training efforts – use data to demonstrate how your efforts shaped the feedback culture, which led to an improved merger, acquisition, or expansion.

Originally published on The People Development Magazine, https://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/2025/07/27/on-the-job-feedback/