The company I work for recently announced a joint venture with a much larger company. While calling this business transaction a joint venture makes it sound harmonious and collaborative, the reality is, it's probably an acquisition. My firm does a few hundred million dollars in annual revenue with 900 employees; the other firm is almost twenty times our size. They outsource their entire IT organization; ours is almost entirely in house. We actually looked at outsourcing our IT department to the same company that manages their IT a few years ago and decided to continue to run it ourselves. We felt we would get better service and could do it for about 20 percent less than what it would cost to outsource.

I manage the IT infrastructure for my company and have about 30 employees who work for me. They are all very dedicated, and I wouldn't change any of them. The team is solid and has pretty much worked together for more than 10 years. We have a few newer employees, but even they have been here for a while now, and they fit in perfectly. We regularly pull off the impossible, and our executive team thinks highly of us.

So when the joint venture was first announced, one of my newer employees asked me, "What does this mean? What should we do?"

I've been through a few acquisitions during my twenty year career in IT, so I shared my perspective with my employees. As more companies contemplate merger and acquisition activity as a way to weather the economic storm, employees need to prepare themselves for change. Here are my secrets for survival.

1. Plan for the worst.

The worst thing that can happen in the event another company acquires your employer is that you get fired and don't get any severance. You're more likely to get some kind of severance package in the event you lose your job. You can also generally collect unemployment for up to a year.

Knowing your future finances may be uncertain, look at your bills and income. If you can pay all of your bills with unemployment checks and you are sure you can start a new job in a month, you probably don't have to worry about your finances too much.