Delta Air Lines CEO explains how employees always come first, despite business challenges

“When we say, ‘We’re people first,’ it’s easy to say, [but] it’s hard to do.”

That’s what Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, told a crowded room at South by Southwest (SXSW) on March 10.

Like most airlines, Delta experienced a major downturn after 9/11 that led to restructuring and layoffs. He explained how Delta bounced back and created an employee-first company culture by listening to and sharing successes with its frontline workers.

Bastian said good leaders don’t blame employees when a company is struggling. “That’s management’s responsibility to make those decisions and to set the path. Not the employees’,” he said.

During that time, he said the company began gathering up to 300 employees at a time for listening sessions. Nearly 20 years later, the listening sessions, dubbed “Velvet,” still happen, and Bastian said they’re key to Delta’s company culture. “If you do that over 20 years, that culture is palpable,” he said. “People talk about culture all the time. And they wonder what culture means. Culture seems like it’s the soft stuff, it’s the nice stuff. No, it’s the hard stuff. Culture is the fabric of your company.”

Bastian said it’s important to celebrate successes with employees, as well. Delta began an annual employee profit sharing program with its employees in 2007. “I promised our people…that when we did turn profitable, that they would get the first rewards, the first fruits of their sacrifices,” he said, noting that the company has distributed more than $11 billion to its employees.

He credits the company’s people-first mentality for getting it through Covid, too. Since the pandemic hit shortly after 2020 payouts from the annual profit sharing program had been distributed, Bastian asked some higher-paid employees to take unpaid time off so lower-paid workers could keep their jobs. “We had 50,000 people take up to two years off without pay,” he said. And 20,000 employees took early retirement. “We wound up shrinking our company in half overnight…we continue to be a better airline for the experience. Not worse.”