Five months to stand up benefits in 35 countries: Lessons from a global carve-out

Standing up benefits for 1,500 acquired employees across 35 countries in just five months seems like a technical challenge: analyze benefit plans, make recommendations, secure quotes and communicate the changes. But in this global carve-out, the thorniest issues were not buried in plan design or implementation. They were rooted in trust and communication. While we were ultimately successful, anxiety and fractured coordination resulted in avoidable escalations, delays and stressful working conditions for the project team.

Gaining leadership trust

Our client’s executive leadership team set clear objectives for Day 1: ensure benefits continuity and manage cost. With those goals in mind, they requested detailed analyses on benefits costs and benchmarking. However, benefits comparability was a Day 1 requirement, meaning this type of analysis had no bearing on the immediate decisions needed. We advised against the analysis given the risks, but leadership was resolute. Trust was lacking. They had not worked with us before, and the benefits team had limited experience managing global programs. Unfortunately, time was spent on analyses that couldn’t be actioned, delaying decisions and compressing the window the benefits team had to operationalize new plans.

A similar lack of trust played out in other areas. In Italy, fee quotes for insured benefits were not finalized until late December, a week before Day 1. The timing felt risky to executive leadership. Despite our reassurances regarding market practices in Italy, leadership-driven escalations added significant effort and stress with little impact.

Also, carriers typically finalize policy documents after Day 1 in the UK and Ireland. Corporate HR leaders, expecting to review finalized policies in advance, saw this as a gap in execution, resulting in additional escalations and criticism of the project team. The fact that this is standard practice in those markets did little to ease their concerns.

Across each of these situations, the issue wasn’t a lack of expertise or execution, it was a lack of trust. Instead of relying on the project team to raise legitimate issues, the escalations were driven from the top down. The benefits team could have accelerated trust-building by inviting our benefits experts to executive leadership meetings to educate, manage expectations and influence decisions. However, organizational and cultural norms and budget sensitivity kept us at arm’s length.

Involving local HR early

One of the most avoidable missteps in global integrations is delayed engagement with local HR. Some corporate teams build the plan first, then validate it with local markets. It feels efficient. In practice, it can lead to unexpected surprises.

In a recent carve-out, local HR leaders were brought in later, and issues that could have been resolved, unexpectedly emerged resulting in additional re-work.

For example, in India, an initial “clone-and-go” strategy had to be revisited when local leaders pushed to harmonize benefits into the buyer’s programs for Day 1. The late-stage pivot resulted in rework and pushing through decisions under the duress of tighter timelines.

In Mexico, local HR wanted to use its own brokers to implement the seller’s plans. Given the compressed timeline, this approach carried risk: the buyer’s broker was unfamiliar with the seller’s plans and lacked established relationships with the relevant benefits vendors. The decision ultimately caused a three-week implementation delay, prompting weekly frustration and questions from the buyer’s executive leadership team about why Mexico was not yet complete. In hindsight, the corporate benefits team could have engaged Mexico HR earlier to identify this requirement while there was still time to address it or pushed back and required use of the seller’s brokers.

The value of engaging local HR early was clear in other markets. For example, in China, early collaboration surfaced an opportunity to rethink a legacy pension arrangement before it became a Day 1 requirement. Rather than replicating a complex structure, the team moved to an allowance, preserving employee value while simplifying execution.

Managing dependencies beyond the core team

Delivering global benefits depends on a broad network of stakeholders, including benefits consultants, brokers, carriers, vendors, procurement, finance, payroll and local HR. Coordinating this network across 35 countries can feel overwhelming. M&A intensifies the challenge by adding compressed timelines, data sharing constraints, a new company, new vendors and a greater need for disciplined communication and project management.

In our carve-out example, the Brazilian health insurer delayed fee quotes despite repeated follow-ups and escalations. When the quotes finally arrived, they included a last-minute requirement for employees and dependents to complete health questionnaires just days before closing. With no time to respond, the team had to extend the seller’s benefit plans after closing, creating a fragmented employee experience. If the requirement had surfaced earlier, the team could have started the questionnaire process before receiving the final quote.

Another challenge was the buyer’s dependence on the seller for benefits information needed to make decisions. Because the seller did not permit direct communication with local teams, simple questions took longer to resolve, and important details surfaced later than they should have. For example, some benefit plans in Singapore and Japan weren’t disclosed during data collection. The issues surfaced only after closing, when employees raised questions. The organization had to reconstruct entitlements, compensate employees and manage a suboptimal employee experience. While sellers can decide how to support a transaction, buyers should establish a regular meeting cadence to address open issues, resolve questions, and avoid delays. That cadence should be monitored and adjusted as needed to remain effective.

The buyer’s vendor onboarding process also began too late to finish before closing. As Day 1 approached, the buyer had to choose between delaying implementation and bypassing the process. An exception was ultimately granted, but only after escalation and internal debate. Separately, a delayed finance payment left meal vouchers unfunded for acquired employees the first month after closing. While these issues are common in M&A, stronger program management can help buyers identify dependencies earlier, communicate them clearly and deliver a better experience for employees.

Looking ahead to your next global benefits implementation

Global benefits implementation is more than a technical exercise; it is a test of how well an organization can coordinate people, decisions and dependencies under pressure. The complexity will always be there, especially in M&A, but it becomes far more manageable when teams create trust, bring local perspectives in early and give implementation partners the information, access and authority they need to execute.

The organizations that do this well do not eliminate surprises entirely, but they are better prepared to absorb them. They move faster because expectations are aligned, they make better decisions because the right voices are in the room and they deliver a stronger employee experience because execution is treated as a shared responsibility from the start.