Delta gets it. For years the company has gone above and beyond to show its employees that they care. Their employees aren’t just workers. Ed Bastian and Delta have essentially made them shareholders and stakeholders through profit sharing. For the last six years, Delta has distributed at least $1 billion to its employees through profit sharing. Yes, $1 billion (not a typo)!
When times are good, they’re really good. But what about when times are bad? The last 12 months have been devastating to practically every industry worldwide, and airlines have been among the hardest hit. Yet, Delta continues to find ways to impact and support its employees amidst of a crisis.
Last week, Delta Air Lines announced that it’s expanding its partnership with Operation HOPE to give more of its employees in Delta hubs across the U.S. access to resources that promote financial empowerment and inclusion through our employee financial wellness program, HOPE Inside the Workplace. With this innovative collaboration, Delta becomes our first national HOPE Inside the Workplace partner.
This national partnership is a natural bookend to what they’ve been doing for years through profit sharing and is a testament to their firm commitment to employee wellness. Even in the hard times, they find ways to empathize with their workers and have sought to help guard them against financial stress. What they are doing and what they have done has become a model for all of corporate America.
Through HOPE Inside the Workplace, specialized workshops focused on credit and money management and one-on-one debt counseling and financial coaching are made available to employees free of charge. With this latest announcement, Operation HOPE’s virtual coaching services will be available to the entire Delta workforce of 80,000 employees in key hub cities, starting with the largest base – Atlanta.
I want to applaud my good friend and member of the HOPE Global Board of Advisors, Ed Bastian, for his visionary leadership in cementing this partnership. We recently attended an employee Town Hall to announce the partnership to Delta employees and explained the benefits of investing in oneself with financial wellness. I can confidently say that his concern for his employee’s financial wellbeing is pure and genuine, and his heart is in the right place. Here’s a highlight of our conversation:
For nearly 29 years, Operation HOPE has been pioneering programs that deliver economic self-sufficiency through innovative partnerships with the public and private sectors. Our HOPE Inside model, was the first of its kind in the banking sector, and was the first nonprofit allowed to sit inside of a bank branch.
Building on this success, Operation HOPE was the first nonprofit to impact national banking standards, including our year-round activity working inside of national, super regional and regional banking franchises, getting banks out of the “no” business, and back into the “yes” business.
Recognizing the economic impacts of disasters, natural and otherwise, Operation HOPE was first to pioneer emergency financial disaster preparedness, response and recovery portfolio within the federal government, and is the national partner with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/FEMA, then the American Red Cross, then major corporations such as UPS, nationwide.
This legacy of pioneering efforts to “meet people where they are” in order to provide everyone with an equitable stake in the American Dream, continues anew with this partnership announcement with Delta.
You can read the full release here and watch the full Town Hall meeting here.