When Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian hosts a keynote event at the iconic Sphere venue in Las Vegas in early January for Delta’s centennial, musician Lenny Kravitz will be the headliner. But 100 top employees will be there in Sin City on an all-expenses-paid trip in a special category of guests.
In November, the 100 workers were named to the carrier’s Chairman’s Club, employee awards that are unlike many in Corporate America. Members are recognized at a red carpet event at Delta’s museum and receive perks like international travel, with many serving as ambassadors for the brand.
“I want the best of Delta in the room,” said Delta CEO Ed Bastian in an interview. Other Delta employees and customers will also be in the audience, but “I think the 100 best deserve to be there,” he said.
While companies large and small have employee awards, Delta spends an outsized amount of time and money on lavishing attention and rewards on its Chairman’s Club honorees.
As a service business, Delta executives see it as a way to demonstrate and reward excellence in their workforce, and part of a broader strategy to maintain a competitive edge. Workers are nominated by other employees — singled out for their service to customers and other employees, exemplifying Delta’s values, and community service.
“Your culture is the most important thing any business has in terms of its competitiveness,” Bastian said. “Keeping this big company that’s 100,000 people strong takes a lot.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
He said thanking the best employees publicly and putting them on stage “pays dividends more than you could ever know.”
Every year, Chairman’s Club honorees also get a free trip to France to pick up a brand new Airbus jet and fly it across the Atlantic before it enters commercial service. This year, they’ll be Delta’s envoys to take delivery of a special plane to celebrate the airline’s 100th anniversary.
On the return flight, Delta executives serve drinks and meals to the employees who won the award — a literal display of the company’s focus on servant leadership.
Don Curtis, who works in alliances at Delta’s Atlanta headquarters and won the Chairman’s Club award in 2023, remembers a senior vice president serving employees onboard, and the experience of being on the Today Show after flying back on Delta’s new Team USA plane ahead of the Paris Olympics.
Kelvin Sharpe, who started out at Delta as a part-time ground worker and is now a general manager, walked the red carpet with his wife in November at the Delta Flight Museum as a 2024 Chairman’s Club honoree. She filmed him walking across the stage to accept the honor.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
“It was something that I played probably over 500 times so far, just trying to relive that night,” said Sharpe, who lives in Powder Springs. He’s looking forward to the trip to Airbus in France, which he calls a “once in a lifetime thing. I get to tell my daughter, and she gets to tell her kids one day — ‘Your granddad did this.’”
Navigating through challenges
Rewarding employees becomes especially important during some of Delta’s most difficult times — such as the aftermath of the CrowdStrike information technology outage that caused Delta’s operations to meltdown in late July.
Employees worked long hours trying to handle angry and frustrated customers. In the days that followed, Delta gave its employees passes for free travel in thanks for their service during those chaotic five days.
The Chairman’s Club, started in 1997, has seen Delta through many tough times, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the COVID-19 pandemic that forced carriers to slash flights and workforces.
During the pandemic, Curtis volunteered to take unpaid leave for a month, then came back to work at a call center helping other Delta employees who were struggling to file for unemployment and facing financial challenges.
“The whole world stopped,” Curtis said. The call center was “what Delta did during that dark time for its people,” he said. Curtis’ compassion was noted in his nominations.
“Hearing an employee or a fellow colleague, you know, crying in the unknown which we all were in, was extremely emotional,” he said.
The rewards for becoming a Chairman’s Club winner include a fancy hotel stay for the awards bash and invitations to represent Delta at exclusive gatherings for corporate customers and special events for the Olympics or other Delta-sponsored events.
Managers conduct extensive planning with family members of honorees to do a big reveal to the winning employee — one sign that this company award is more significant than a standard employee of the month certificate at other companies.
Lindsey Pisli, a Delta flight attendant and instructor, didn’t know she won the award when her husband Genti got a call from her manager. “I was extremely proud,” Genti Pisli said. “I was crying like a little baby. … She loves what she does.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
A ‘unique culture’
Awards alone are no guarantee of success, nor a good company culture, of course.
Joanne Smith, Delta’s outgoing chief people officer, started at the company 22 years ago, and has “seen where we were, what we went through, and where we are now.”
Smith said Delta’s strategy when she joined the airline “was misaligned with our culture,” focused on slashing expenses and competing with low-cost carriers via a short-lived discount operation called Song and other ill-fated forays.
“Delta people wanted to be about premium and service and hospitality,” Smith said. “The magic happens when we finally admitted this culture is about service and heart.”
Delta also leans hard into its culture when it faces external pressures — including from unions seeking to organize its flight attendants and ground workers. The company on its website to combat union campaigns says it is “a great place to work” and that “our unique culture empowers our people.”
“Delta invests more in you because you are the best in the industry,” the company says on the website.
The Association of Flight Attendants union is in the middle of an organizing push in its campaign to unionize Delta flight attendants — increasing the pressure on the company to seek to show that it treats employees well. Union officials have criticized Delta for having a hostile work environment for workers trying to form a union.
Twenty-five U.S. senators, all Democrats, wrote in a letter to Bastian in May 2024 saying “our constituents have informed us about Delta’s history of deploying unionbusting tactics, including threatening employees with termination of their benefits, distributing antiunion literature, and hosting an antiunion website.”
Delta has said it “respects our employees’ right to decide if union representation is right for them. We believe our direct relationship with employees has proven to be a stronger, faster, and more effective in driving improvements, which is why Delta employees have repeatedly rejected union representation from AFA and other groups over the past 20 years.”
Allison Ausband, the incoming head of human resources, joined the airline as a flight attendant 39 years ago and says the awards are an example of the “Delta difference.”
Ausband, who was one of the first Chairman’s Club award honorees in 1997, said a lot of employees aspire to join the Chairman’s Club.
“That helps us build those behaviors of welcome, caring and elevated,” she said.
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