An internal mobility operation triggered a labour conflict that the management were not expecting. A BPI team was mobilised to reinitialise dialogue between all the actors, and to build a real project. Time was of the essence&.

Context
Cultural Barrier
Three years ago, the group bought a plant located close to one of its sites in order to increase its market share in the large-scale catering. The industrial duplication was stigmatised by a huge restructuring plan on a national scale, and the decision was taken to develop the first factory to receive the 120 employees of the plant that had been bought. Management began this internal mobility operation fully confident. They did not, however, take into account the local situation. The two plants were 25 km apart in the same local government area, yet there was a cultural divide between them. The employees were opposed to the move. The management team rapidly set up a repurchase project to be piloted by two executives in a sector of activity with good potential that the company had not planned to develop. This project required a team of ten people only, and the conflict escalated. In July, the employees organised demonstrations supported by their local MPs. The management team called on BPI for support in this situation.

Task
Media(c)tion
The priority was to rebuild a project for the site that was acceptable from the economic, social and political points of view. It soon became apparent that the two executives who had committed themselves to the project under the pressure of events were unable to follow it through. BPI's consultants therefore turned to their networks of repurchased and immediately found confirmation that the site had potential - a local business owner showed considerable interest and was interested in starting negotiations. BPI organised the contact between the different parties and the setting-up of the operation: the new activity employed 30 people, and a subcontracting agreement enabled the number of jobs maintained on the site to be doubled and the reconversion to be organised progressively. The operation was off to a promising start, but it was not yet plain sailing. An expert consultant was mobilised to take up the dialogue with the local MPs who slowly began to back the new project. In September, the central works council freed up the process and started negotiations on the new redundancy programme. In parallel to this, BPI assisted in finalising the negotiations between the new buyer and the group along with the economic validation of the project.

Perspectives
Good Practice and Results
After setting a value for the asset that they were selling, the group was recentred on a single site which created employment, and the buyer began development with ready-trained employees and reliable know-how - an alternative to geographical mobility was offered to all employees. The operation was completely rebuilt in the space of two months and both sides came out winners. The BPI team rose to the challenge in a context which left no leeway for BPI's preferred usual methods - build the project over time, systematically prospect, build scenarios for internal and external communication& the essential thing is in the result and in Driving Change Positively.