With the increasing competition in the globalized economy, mergers are expected to occur at a much larger scale than any time in the past and have played a major role in achieving the competitive edge in the dynamic market environment. Mergers can prove to be a huge risk to the human resources of both companies. If not done with care, a proper understanding of each other by either the entities or the lack of willingness among anyone to co-operate, the whole effort may go waste and the whole result will be disastrous. This situation mostly occurs when most mergers fail to consider or address the concern of the employees within the firm, especially of the firm which is being acquired. Mergers and acquisitions is nothing new in India, as can be witnessed through the merging of the three Presidency banks of India - the Bank of Bengal, the Bank of Bombay and the Bank of Madras in 1921, to form the Imperial Bank of India and later, after Independence, came to be renamed as the State Bank of India. Later, we could see the only merger between nationalized banks, when the New Bank of India was merged by the Government with Punjab National Bank, in 1993. More initiatives were seen in this regard in the private sector. But, it was the largest merger by HDFC in 2008 (with the Centurion Bank of Punjab) that triggered off some studies in this area. This study deals with the attitude of employees in HDFC Bank during the pre-merger and post-merger period.

Keywords: Bank, Merger, Employees, HDFC Bank, Pre-merger, Post-merger.