Post-merger integration survey: the first 100 days

A post-merger integration survey should ask employees what they understand about the deal, what they are unsure about in their own role, how well leaders are communicating, what is changing in their work, where the two cultures differ and whether they plan to stay. Ask early, in the first two or three weeks, then again around Day 45 and Day 90, so you can see what your decisions changed. Keep the questions open and in plain words, and ask about leaving with care.

Why ask employees anything in the first 100 days?

Because the integration plan is built from what leaders know, and leaders know least about the parts of the business that will decide whether the deal works: the depot that runs on one supervisor’s goodwill, the product team waiting to see if their code survives, the finance clerks who have heard their jobs are moving.

SHRM’s M&A toolkit lists what employees worry about after a deal: job security, who has decision-making authority, career continuity and cultural fit. It also notes that retention risk rises sharply during mergers and acquisitions, and that career clarity and role stability often matter more to people than financial incentives alone. The CIPD makes a related point in its employer brand factsheet: mergers and acquisitions have a particularly significant impact on the psychological contract between people and their employer, so it is good practice to review the employee value proposition afterwards.

Role clarity is fragile even without a deal. Gallup found that in the first half of 2026 only 49% of employees strongly agreed they know what is expected of them at work. An acquisition puts that answer in question for everyone in the company that was bought.

You cannot answer worries you have not heard. Asking also signals that someone is listening, which matters most in the company that was bought.

Post-merger integration employee survey: what should we ask?

Pick four to six questions per round. The lists below are deliberately longer than one survey needs, so you can choose what fits your deal. Ask the same core questions in both companies so you can compare them.

Understanding the deal

1. In your own words, why do you think the two companies are combining?
2. What have you heard about the integration so far, and where did you hear it?
3. What would you most like leadership to explain about the deal?
4. What, if anything, makes you hopeful about the combined company?

Uncertainty about my role

1. How clear are you about what is expected of you right now?
2. What questions about your own role or team are still unanswered?
3. Has anything already changed in who you report to or who approves your work?
4. What would help you feel more certain about the next few months?

Leadership and communication

1. How have you found out about changes so far: from your manager, from announcements, or from colleagues?
2. What has leadership communicated well, and what has been unclear?
3. Is there a question you have not felt able to ask? What is it?
4. How well does your manager know what is happening in the integration?

How work is changing

1. What has changed in your day-to-day work since the deal was announced?
2. Which systems, tools or processes are you most concerned about losing or changing?
3. Where is work slowing down or getting stuck because of the integration?
4. What is working well today that the integration should leave alone?

Culture differences

1. From what you have seen, how do the two companies differ in the way decisions get made?
2. What does the other company do that you would like to adopt?
3. What about the way your team works would you most want to keep?
4. Describe a recent moment when the two ways of working clashed. What happened?

Intent to stay

1. What would make you want to build your career in the combined company?
2. What, if anything, would make you consider leaving in the next year?
3. Who on your team would be hardest to replace, and why? (Ask about roles and skills, not names.)
4. What could the company do in the next month that would make the biggest difference to you?

How do you ask about flight risk without making it worse?

Carefully, and late in the conversation. Opening with “Are you planning to leave?” makes people defensive and reads as a loyalty test. Ask first about what they value and what would help, then about what could make them leave. Framing it as “what would make you consider” gives people room to answer honestly without committing to anything.

Be clear about confidentiality before you ask, and keep your promise. If anyone suspects their answer about leaving will reach their manager with their name on it, you will get polite answers and lose the warning signs. Report flight risk by team and theme, never by person, and do not show results for groups too small to protect individuals. We explain where to set that limit in our post on the employee survey anonymity threshold.

Then act on what you hear. If engineers say they are waiting to see whether their product survives, the useful response is a decision about the product, told to them directly.

First 100 days after an acquisition: how do you understand how employees feel?

Plan three or four short rounds. Here is a timing plan that works for most deals.

Before Day 1

Agree what you will ask, who owns the results and how you will report back. Brief works councils or employee representatives where they exist. Decide which questions stay the same in every round so you can track change.

Weeks 1 to 3: the baseline

Ask everyone in the acquired company, and a matching group in the acquirer, about understanding the deal, uncertainty about their role and what they want to keep. This round catches rumours early and tells you where communication is not reaching. Share a summary of what you heard within two weeks, with at least one thing you are doing about it.

Around Day 45: the working round

Focus on how work is changing and where the two cultures meet. By now teams have started working together, systems are being merged and the first clashes have happened. Ask about specific moments. Compare departments: the sales team and the warehouse will have very different experiences of the same integration.

Around Day 90 to 100: the check

Repeat the core questions from the baseline and add intent to stay. The useful output is the change since Day 1: which worries have gone, which have grown and which teams have been left behind. That feeds the next phase of the integration plan.

Should you use a pulse survey or interviews?

A pulse survey with scaled questions is fast and gives you a trend line. The open questions above need more than a text box, though. When someone answers “communication has been poor,” you need to know what they were not told, by whom, and what they did instead.

Spradley runs these questions as one-on-one AI interviews, by text or voice. Invitations go out by email or Slack, people answer on their own phone or computer in their own time, and the interviewer asks a follow-up question on each answer. The report groups answers into themes with the quotes behind them, so you can compare the acquired company with the acquirer and one department with another, and numbers and ratings are never shown for fewer than five people. See how it fits an integration on our merger integration page.

If you are still before close, start with cultural due diligence: what you can learn about the other company’s culture before signing, and how to turn it into the questions above.

Frequently asked questions

Key terms

Day 1

The first day the companies operate under the new ownership, once a deal has closed.

flight risk

The likelihood that an employee will leave. It tends to rise during mergers and acquisitions, when roles and reporting lines are uncertain.

psychological contract

The unwritten expectations between employees and employer about what each owes the other. Mergers and acquisitions can change it significantly.

pulse survey

A short survey run often, typically five to ten questions on one or two themes, monthly or quarterly. It shows whether something is moving between larger surveys.

cultural due diligence

The assessment of how two companies in a deal actually work: who decides, how work gets done, pace, risk appetite and incentives. Its aim is to find differences that will affect the integration.

minimum group size

The smallest number of responses a group needs before its results are shown. Five is a common default; smaller groups are hidden or combined with a larger one.