Thousands at a DAX-40 company buy-in to change live

CLIENT & INDUSTRY

Mechanical Engineering Group (DAX-40),
Automotive Industry, Tier1

SERVICES

Transformation Communications

Live Communication

Panel Discussion

The executive board of a 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.

One of the biggest social and emotional challenges of this multi transformation project was the fear of thousands of employees that their original qualifications might no longer meet the new requirements, so that they would be dismissed.
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 an important role in this scenario.

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.
At the end of the transformation communications live event, a large majority of the 4,500 participants were convinced that there would be no layoffs for the time being.
And they understood that offers for retraining and further education would be developed for them in cooperation with regional educational institutions.
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.