You are Camille Rousseau, Site Transformation Lead at Verene Composites in Tours, France. An internal email about closing the Limoges plant has just reached every employee before anyone was consulted, and trust in management's decisions collapsed overnight. Before you plan the next 30 days, you must say on Monday what exactly broke.
The situation
Verene makes composite components for aerospace and wind energy: €380M in revenue, a 9% operating margin and 1,400 people across three plants, Tours, Clermont and Limoges. Aerospace demand has recovered faster than wind, and Limoges, the smallest plant, runs below scale and loses money. The plan is to close it, move its 250 jobs to Tours and Clermont and save about €14M a year. Inside the executive committee, the numbers are barely debated.
On 9 June, an email meant for a handful of directors reached the whole company. By the next morning, a snap survey across all three plants put trust in management's decision-making at 34%; before the leak it stood at 62%. A regional newspaper has asked for comment, a major aerospace customer is asking whether its supply is at risk, and the two senior Limoges engineers the transfer depends on have made it clear that how this is handled will decide whether they stay.
The clock is running. French law requires Verene to inform and consult its works council (the CSE) before finalising a change like this; mishandle that consultation and a legal challenge can freeze the plan for 4 to 6 months. Management also reckons that about €9M of the saving depends on anxiety not turning into lost productivity. The board has given you 30 days. Three explanations of what happened are going round the corridors, and each one calls for a different plan.