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Merger Integration & Alignment
Whole-programme support to credit unions navigating mergers and major organisational or system change.
Overview
Merger Integration & Alignment provides whole-programme support to credit unions navigating mergers and major organisational or system change.
Mergers and large-scale change programmes typically involve multiple workstreams and advisors, including project management, IT, HR and legal support. While these roles are essential, they often focus on individual elements of delivery. What is frequently missing is a role that sits across the programme, focused on how decisions land operationally, how they are experienced by staff, and how they shape culture, behaviour and day-to-day delivery.
Merger Integration & Alignment fills that gap.
The role focuses on connecting systems, processes, people and culture, ensuring that change works coherently in practice and not just on paper.
What This Role Is (and Is Not)
Merger Integration & Alignment does not replace project management, IT or HR expertise. Instead, it works alongside these functions, providing an independent, operationally grounded perspective across the full programme.
The focus is on:
  • sense-checking decisions as they are developed
  • understanding operational and behavioural impact before issues arise
  • supporting internal teams who must deliver change while maintaining service
  • aligning intent, communication and lived experience
This role brings coherence to complex change by looking at the organisation as a whole rather than through a single functional lens.
A Whole-Programme, Operational Perspective
Merger Integration & Alignment operates across all stages and elements of a merger or change programme.
This includes:
  • working alongside programme and project management structures
  • engaging with IT and system implementation teams
  • supporting HR-related decisions and their communication
  • working with senior leadership and governance structures
  • engaging with operational and member-facing teams
The value of this role lies in its ability to see connections, tensions and risks that are often missed when workstreams operate in parallel.
Hands-On Reflection and Real-Time Sense-Checking
A defining feature of this role is the ability to provide credible, practical reflection in real time.
This is grounded in deep, hands-on experience across all areas of credit union operations and governance, from Board and senior management level through to frontline, member-facing roles.
This allows Merger Integration & Alignment support to:
• reflect how decisions are likely to be experienced across different parts of the organisation
• support leaders and managers to sense-check their thinking
• identify disconnects between intent and impact
• provide reassurance and challenge based on lived operational experience
This is not abstract advice or theoretical coaching. It is practical, informed support rooted in having operated within credit unions and delivered change in similar conditions.
Supporting Internal Teams Through Change
Merger Integration & Alignment places strong emphasis on supporting the people within the organisation who are required to deliver change.
This includes:
  • helping teams make sense of what is changing and why
  • acting as an independent, trusted sounding board
  • identifying pressure points and fatigue early
  • supporting managers with difficult or sensitive conversations
  • reducing reliance on informal workarounds that create long-term risk
This support helps maintain stability, confidence and trust throughout periods of change.
Integration of Systems, Processes, People and Culture
When mergers and system change occur together, misalignment risk increases significantly.
Merger Integration & Alignment supports the integration of:
  • systems and technology
  • operational processes
  • roles and responsibilities
  • decision-making practices
  • culture and ways of working
This ensures that technical delivery, operational readiness and cultural alignment progress together rather than in isolation.
HR Decisions, Governance and Behavioural Risk
Decisions relating to roles, structures, reporting lines and policies carry significant symbolic and behavioural impact during change.
Merger Integration & Alignment supports leadership teams by:
  • sense-checking HR-related decisions from an operational and cultural perspective
  • considering timing, framing and consistency
  • identifying potential behavioural risk early
  • helping align leadership intent with staff perception
This work strengthens governance, supports fairness and reduces the risk of unintended consequences.
How This Links to Culture Strategy & Alignment
Merger Integration & Alignment is closely connected to Culture Strategy & Cultural Alignment.
Operational decisions made during mergers and change shape culture in real time. By working across the programme, this role helps ensure that operational delivery reinforces trust, fairness and one-team ways of working rather than undermining them.
Together, these offerings support sustainable change that is operationally sound, culturally aligned and governance-aware.
Next Steps
If your organisation is preparing for, undergoing or embedding a merger or major system change and would benefit from whole-programme, operationally grounded integration and alignment support, an initial conversation can help clarify where this role would add most value.

These conversations are confidential, informal and without obligation.
Contact
Norma Reilly
📞 086 8696853
✉️ norma@onsitecusolutions.ie