Volume 2 Issue 1 - 2009
Employee Preference | Global Research Center | Kraft Integrates China Staff 

Kraft Smoothly Integrates Danone Staff in China

The business challenge

Kraft’s global purchase of Danone’s biscuit unit in late 2007 doubled the size of Kraft’s business in China making it the largest supplier in the Chinese biscuit market with a 20% market share. The acquisition created the need to join together two organizations and workforces, which had different corporate cultures, HR policies and management styles. Kraft turned to Aon Consulting for assistance.

Solution

Over the past year, Aon Consulting has been working with Kraft in three separate projects. According to Rainer B. Schmitz, Human Resources Director for Kraft Foods China, one of the reasons why Kraft chose Aon was that “Aon brought together good talent from many organizations and we had the impression that they had a very good knowledge base.”

The first project entailed a gap analysis and market overview for the compensation and benefits programs. Aon consultants conducted a thorough analysis and comparison of compensation, sales incentive, long-term incentive, benefits, perquisites and HR policies, so as to fully understand the gap before proposing an integration design.

In the second project Aon Consulting designed and recommended an integrated and optimized sales incentive design for the new sales team for the company. With our detailed market information and project experience in mergers and acquisitions, we were able to propose performance-driven sales incentive programs. The program included multi-level communication plan and group discussion sessions including all sales persons covered by the plan.

In the third project, Aon consultants integrated and optimized the benefits and policies for the whole organization. We proposed a new benefits framework to align the two parties and selected vendors for the new company.  Aon also designed a communication toolkit after consultation with the unions in order to communicate and sell the changes to employees and families.

Kraft found that Aon Consulting’s client focus is what distinguished the firm. According to Schmitz, “In all three projects we needed market knowledge and Aon brought good benchmarks. I found Aon support very helpful. I never had a moment when I feared that the team was not engaged. Over 12 months Aon provided continuous support. Whenever I had spontaneous requests, Aon was always there. Aon has done a lot for us. It was a very good working relationship.”

Results

As a result of the three projects, the new sales incentive plan and benefits programs have been fully aligned with the business strategy and were well received by the new management team, employees and the unions.