Alignment Navigated: Assessing Cultural Alignment Post-Merger at BACU
-
December 02, 2025
-
Looking for an opportunity to expand its production capabilities, BACU, a Dutch family-owned bakery, acquired HEMA’s industrial bakery operations in 2022. The acquisition increased BACU’s revenue from €80 million to €150 million, while increasing the size of its workforce from 550 to 800 employees.
While BACU is a family-owned business with its heritage rooted in craftmanship, close-knit relationships and a strong sense of local identity, HEMA is a large national retail chain with a well-established consumer brand and large corporate structure driving its operations. Integrating these two businesses entailed more than ‘simply’ aligning systems, processes and reporting lines – BACU had to build a bridge between two fundamentally different organizational cultures before it could capitalize on potential synergies.
Two years after the acquisition, FTI Consulting helped BACU assess how successful it has been in navigating the cultural complexities of the integration and advised the company on how to address remaining cultural differences and manage continuous cultural alignment going forward.
- An in depth data-driven cultural diagnostic showed that BACU successfully integrated the HEMA employee population into its own business, which was reflected by their satisfaction levels in relation to BACU’s key cultural drivers.
- BACU was able to pinpoint immediate cultural risks, identify ‘quick wins’ to enhance the employee experience and setup targeted initiatives to drive long-term cultural alignment and employee engagement.
- The insights provided sparked a meaningful dialogue between BACU’s leadership and middle management and created a shared understanding of how to manage continuous cultural integration.
- By taking a data-driven approach, FTI Consulting ultimately enabled BACU’s leadership team to approach its company culture and employee experience with quantitative insights, rather than relying on intuition and ‘gut-feel’.
Our Role:
- FTI Consulting ran a cultural diagnostic rooted in psychometric and psychological methodologies to assess the core dimensions of BACU’s employee experience.
- A multidisciplinary team of data analysts, organizational psychologists and business transformation experts analyzed the data received from the diagnostic and assessed cultural differences between incumbent BACU employees and acquired HEMA employees.
- Cultural drivers were further assessed to help BACU navigate risks – such as retention and workplace safety – and understand what dimensions of the employee experience contribute to BACU’s growth and success as a business.
Related Insights
Published
December 02, 2025
Key Contacts
Senior Managing Director