OneTen At Delta Air Lines: Catalyzing Family-Sustaining Careers for Black Talent (B)

In January 2023, Delta Air Lines (Delta) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ed Bastian and his team had just launched the third iteration of an internal skills-first apprenticeship program, designed to move frontline employees into "merit" positions in four job categories. The move to implement an apprenticeship program further advanced Delta’s commitment to OneTen’s “skills-first” strategy for Black talent. The DE&I and Talent teams launched the pilot program in March 2022 and the second iteration in July 2022. The program grew with each iteration, but the post-mortem of the third program revealed that Delta did not yet have the "bandwidth" to grow the program, and the program would require more leadership development and support for the managers and mentors of the apprentices.

The team recognized that they had to figure out how to scale the program with some speed, but knew that change management would take a couple of years. Despite the challenges ahead, the skills-first apprenticeship program had only affirmed for Bastian that Delta was headed in the right direction, as they were better as a company when frontline employees graduated into different skills and opportunities and brought their knowledge of the business into corporate functions of the company. What, if anything, could they do to scale the program faster without sacrificing quality?