VW Employees Criticize the Executive Board's Communication

According to an internal survey, Volkswagen employees are highly critical of the company’s public image as presented by the Executive Board. An intranet article obtained by the German Press Agency states that employees and their families are “unsettled and frightened” due to the “disastrous external communication by the Executive Board.”

In the online survey on employee sentiment initiated by the works council, the workforce had the opportunity last week (August 17–21) to voice their criticisms and expectations regarding CEO Oliver Blume and the rest of the Executive Board on the company’s intranet. The survey included the option to “like” a suggestion to indicate support for it.

In the end, more than 100 questions were available to choose from. In summary, the top five questions addressed the following aspects:

• Criticism of the Group Executive Board’s communication
• Workers’ fears about their jobs
• The future of socially responsible cost-cutting measures, as well as partial retirement and severance agreements
• The prospects for the plants in Emden, Hanover, Neckarsulm, Osnabrück, and Zwickau
• The strategy for customer trust, future products, and processes within the company’s own organization

The top five all received three-digit numbers of “Likes,” which is a record high for the intranet.

Crisis and major concerns at VW

The company is struggling with high costs and a challenging business environment. VW management aims to cut costs and improve competitiveness. Employees, unions, and politicians fear for tens of thousands of jobs and for the Emden, Hanover, Zwickau, and Neckarsulm locations.

“The situation is more than critical,” Blume said recently in an interview published on the company’s intranet and obtained by dpa. According to Blume, VW isn’t earning enough to finance its future. Cost-cutting measures to date have not been sufficient. “We are oversized. That often makes us too slow and too complicated,” the VW CEO said, describing the problem.

The Group Executive Board could provide initial answers to the questions and responses to the criticism in the coming days. No fewer than nine extraordinary employee meetings are scheduled at Volkswagen. The first employee meeting will take place on Tuesday, August 25, in Wolfsburg.