Message to employees

Dear colleagues,

Last month, I was honoured to be asked to take the helm as Bombardier’s new Chief Executive Officer. Having previously worked in both the rail and aerospace sides of our business, I understand and share your commitment and deep passion for our company.  

When I accepted this new position, I thought that my first message to all of you would be about how excited I am to return to our great company, how optimistic I am about our future, and how we’ll work together to rebuild our business, reset our culture and start an exciting new chapter.

While this is all still true, our world has changed dramatically in the past few weeks and our immediate focus must be on protecting your health and safety, supporting our customers to the best of our abilities and ensuring that Bombardier can successfully navigate through this global crisis.

Managing through exceptional times

I recognize how difficult the current situation is for everyone. The global health and economic crisis has created unprecedented challenges for our company, our customers and all of us individually. We’re all concerned about the health and safety of our loved ones, being able to provide for our families and what the global pandemic means for our collective future. 

As you all know, our ability to build and deliver our incredible products to customers has been severely limited. This led us to make the incredibly difficult decision to suspend a large portion of our operations and temporarily lay off members of our workforce. For those of us that continue to work, the extra burden of managing the crisis and ensuring our preparedness to quickly return our operations to normal when the current crisis passes is extremely challenging.

So, whether you’ve been temporarily laid off or continue to work, I want to extend my deepest gratitude for your support and understanding during this unprecedented time. You have my commitment that Bombardier will continue to do what’s right for our people and for our customers and support the global efforts to overcome and move past the pandemic.

Focusing on the right priorities

While we continue to navigate the global crisis together and prepare for recovery, it’s critical that we align on the right priorities to first stabilize and then grow our business.

For the next 12 months, we will be focusing on these six priorities:

• At first, we’ll continue to proactively manage both of our businesses through the COVID-19 crisis to ensure our company’s long-term sustainability;
• Making our rail business predictable by being consistent in our performance;
• Aligning Bombardier Aviation with market demand to be more profitable and a steadier cash-flow generating business;
• Vigorously pursuing business aviation aftermarket growth opportunities;
• Completing the aerospace divestitures currently underway, supporting the regulatory approval and completion of the sale of Bombardier Transportation to Alstom and solving our balance sheet challenges once and for all;
• Setting the foundation for long-term success by defining a clear vision for our company and resetting our culture.

I’ll communicate much more about these priorities in the future, especially about Bombardier’s culture, values and the way I want all of us to work as a team. Starting today, these are the most important pillars of the culture we’ll build together: 

• We are a people and customer-centric organization;
• We value performance and honour our commitments to shareholders;  
• Operational excellence is fundamental to our company’s DNA and an integral part of everything we do;
• We work together with a team spirit;
• We are transparent and authentic at all times and at all levels of the organization.

These are the values you’ll see in the way I lead, and I count on all of you to help me drive them across Bombardier.

I look forward to connecting with you as we return to our normal business operations. Until then, stay safe.

Sincerely,

Eric Martel, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bombardier Inc.