TUPE, M&A and Organisational Change
TUPE transfers, restructures and post-acquisition integrations don't usually fail because of the legal framework. They go wrong because the people side isn't managed carefully enough. I've led the HR workstream on a £500m acquisition, integrated 750 people across organisations and delivered over 100 site closures. This is the work I know best.
What is TUPE? TUPE (the Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment Regulations 2006) applies when a business or part of a business transfers to a new employer. It protects employees' terms and conditions, transfers continuity of service, and requires formal information and consultation with affected employees. Getting it wrong creates tribunal exposure, deal delays and reputational damage.
Areas of work
- TUPE transfers: planning, consultation and delivery across transfers of employees between organisations.
- Restructures and redundancy consultation: designing and running change programmes that are fair, compliant and commercially sound.
- Mergers and acquisitions: workforce integration, culture alignment and operating model changes that stick.
- Organisational design: reviewing structure, roles and accountabilities to reflect where the business is going, not where it has been.
- Employee relations during change: managing disputes, union conflict and workforce engagement when uncertainty is high and trust has already been damaged.
TUPE, restructure and M&A: how they differ
Three distinct types of change with overlapping vocabulary. Knowing which one you're actually in matters because the legal framework, consultation duty and most common failure modes are different in each.
| TUPE transfer | Restructure | M&A people integration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| When it applies | A business or part of one transfers to a new employer, or a service contract changes provider | Roles, structure or headcount change inside the same employer | An acquisition completes and the workforce of the acquired business needs integrating |
| Legal framework | TUPE Regulations 2006: terms protected, continuity preserved, statutory inform and consult | Employment Rights Act, plus collective consultation rules where 20+ redundancies are proposed at one site within 90 days | TUPE if the deal triggers it (often does), plus the commercial agreement, plus any restructure that follows |
| Consultation duty | Inform and consult representatives in good time before transfer; no minimum statutory period but must be meaningful | 30 or 45 days minimum collective consultation if 20+ or 100+ redundancies; otherwise individual consultation | TUPE consultation if applicable, plus restructure consultation for any post-deal organisational change |
| Timeline driver | Transfer date, often non-negotiable | Business need and consultation minimums | Deal completion date and shareholder expectations on synergies |
| Common failure mode | Process drift: information shared late, ELI underchecked, post-transfer harmonisation attempted too soon | Decisions taken before consultation has happened; selection criteria challenged at tribunal | People workstream underweighted in the deal team; integration runs out of momentum after week six |
What good looks like
Workforce change is manageable when it is planned properly, communicated clearly and led with steady judgement. What tends to go wrong is when the people workstream gets treated as an afterthought to the commercial or operational plan.
I work alongside leadership teams to make sure the HR side of the change is structured, legally sound and genuinely understood by the people going through it. I've led TUPE transfers where consultation had already broken down before I arrived. I've run restructures where the union relationship was adversarial and the timeline was non-negotiable. The aim is always the same: protect the organisation from tribunal exposure and keep the workforce engaged on the other side.
Case studies
Restructuring a national branch network. A national property services business with around 5,000 employees across 700 branches needed to restructure under sustained market pressure. I designed a new target operating model covering job design, career paths, remuneration and terms across sixty brands, and led the people side of a programme that closed over 100 branches. The programme delivered £9m in operational savings while maintaining service continuity throughout.
Read the full case study →Leading the people workstream in a major acquisition. A large insurance group acquired a commercial lines business, bringing around 750 employees into the organisation under TUPE. I led the people workstream end to end, covering TUPE compliance, organisational design, data integrity and change readiness. Attrition was held below 13% despite prolonged uncertainty, and the transition into business as usual was clean.
Read the full case study →Planning a transfer, restructure or integration?
If something is on the horizon and you want to think through the people side early, a conversation is the easiest place to start.