Transformation Communications

How 40,000 employees at an OEM overcame their fears and started embracing the change.

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Transformation Communications

Transformation:

The executive board of an automotive OEM with more than 120,000 employees worldwide (turnover: +100 billion EUR) wanted to shorten a core process by about 30 percent as part of a group-wide transformation. In the past, such efforts had regularly failed due to the resistance of the function units (mindset: „That’s not possible because …“). However, since the importance of time to market was constantly increasing, the shortening had to succeed this time. Around 40,000 MA were directly or indirectly affected by this. Therefore, a transformation communications strategy was urgently needed.

Social & Emotional Aspects:

As already in the past, those affected again perceived the planned transformation with its effects on many sub-processes as a threat. This led to strong fears and turmoil among the staff. At the same time, the board demanded a new attitude from them (mindset: „This would work if …“) and a correspondingly different behaviour. This potential restriction of freedom to act led to reactance and resistance against the change project.

viadoo Contribution:

In order to effectively counter the fears and resistance to the top-down change among the 40,000 people affected, we at the change consultancy viadoo relied on as much participation as possible as well as informative and emotional communication. In this way, the employees were to:

be actively involved in the change
engage in constructive dialogue with their respective managers
gain trust and be motivated to adopt the new mindset

First, we conducted a stakeholder and change impact analysis. Then we developed a narrative to provide leaders with answers to the questions “Why?” and “Why now?”. We also generated a hybrid process (online and face-to-face elements) to develop a shared transformation vision. As a central element of our change architecture, we set up the transformation communications strategy and plan. Based on our editorial plan, the project team conducted dialogues with stakeholders through internal channels via interviews, events and multimedia storytelling (video clips, news article, posters etc.).

Key Performances:

40,000

employees directly and indirectly affected by the transformation started embracing the change.

-30%

30 percent reduced core process and correspondingly speeded up time-to-market. This increased the OEM’s competitiveness.

+40

pages comprised viadoo’s change architecture. It included a transformation communications strategy on which the Transformation Office was able to communicate.

+90

days was a viadoo team member fully integrated into the OEM’s Transformation Office.

Category: Transformation Communications02/10/2023

40,000

-30%

+40

+90

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