From workforce resistance to €80 million in cost savings

Live Communication

How we designed and moderated a live event that built trust among 4,500 employees of a DAX 40 supplier

Initial Situation

The executive board of a tier1 supplier with a long metalworking tradition and over 150,000 employees at 230 sites (turnover: +30 billion EUR) wanted to transform the group into a high-tech company with its own software and hardware development.

At the same time, the tier1 company had to react to a declining profit situation.

Among the 50,000 employees in Germany, especially at one of the largest locations with about 9,000 employees, these plans led to unrest and even demonstrations.

A transformation communications live event was supposed to remedy the situation.

Challenge

One of the biggest social and emotional challenges of this multi-transformation project was widespread job insecurity. Thousands of employees feared that their existing qualifications would no longer meet the new requirements. They worried about losing their jobs.

In addition there certainly was a risk of internal conflicts, resistance, unwanted fluctuation (departure of high-performers) and major productivity losses.

The works council and trade unions played another important role in this scenario.

Solution

In order to reduce the fears outlined above, we at viadoo designed a live communication event together with the supplier.

It was intended to trigger motivation among the workforce.

We therefore prepared a panel discussion with representatives from local politics, education, management, works council and trade union.

We then moderated of the panel discussion in front of 4,500 participants.

Results

By the end of the transformation communications live event, a large majority of the 4,500 participants felt confident that the company would avoid layoffs for the time being, following their overwhelming approval of a corresponding proposal by the works council.

They also trusted that the company would work with regional educational institutions to develop retraining and further education opportunities for them.

In this way, many of the 9,000 employees (primarily blue collar) at this site were able to overcome their initial fears. They also began to cautiously develop trust in the transformation.

At the end of the live event, the workforce made concessions that enabled the company to reduce production costs by 80 million euros.

As we naturally take the confidentiality of our clients seriously, we anonymize our success stories. However, the cases are real.