Cultures of Health at Work: The CEO Sets the Tone

From 1990 to my retirement in 2008, I had the privilege of shaping a culture of health at Pitney Bowes that became a model for others. The results were measurable: healthcare costs 23% below industry benchmarks, lower absenteeism, fewer disability claims, and improved overall wellbeing.

A Harvard Business School case study by Professor Michael Porter and Jennifer Baron highlighted the clinics we built, our preventive care investments, wellness incentives, facility redesigns, and innovations in behavioral health and benefits design. This is a link to ordering that study.

Pitney Bowes: Employer Health Strategy - Case - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School

These programs mattered—but they were not the whole story.

What truly determined whether our employees thrived or suffered was something less visible but more powerful: how leaders managed stress through their words, decisions, and behaviors.

Chronic stress is not just an emotional burden; it is a medical crisis. It drives cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, weakened immunity, and shortened life expectancy. Stressed employees overeat, consume unhealthy beverages, sleep poorly, and disengage. Conversely, employees who feel secure, supported, and treated fairly are more resilient, healthier, and productive.

That is where the CEO’s role is decisive. Programs and benefits matter, but the tone the CEO sets—every day—determines whether a company becomes a sanctuary from stress or a source of it.

Leadership Behaviors that Reduce Stress

Ethics and Trust at the Top

The most powerful stress reducer is trust. Employees who believe leaders act with integrity waste no energy guarding against predatory behavior or fearing hidden agendas.When CEOs chase excess compensation, cut corners, or tolerate dishonesty, they create a culture of suspicion that corrodes health.

At Pitney Bowes, I learned that even small acts—declaring purchases honestly at customs, or being meticulously truthful in completing expense reports, for example—sent signals employees remembered and replicated. Trustworthy, transparent leadership lowers stress and inspires pride. Unfairness, secrecy, favoritism, and cheating at the margins raise it.

Demanding but Realistic Goals

Pressure to hit targets is unavoidable. But when goals are unrealistic, employees experience the destructive mismatch between expectations and resources.The Volkswagen emissions scandal is a cautionary tale: fear of disappointing leadership led engineers to conceal the truth, triggering massive legal, reputational, and human costs.

At Pitney Bowes, we missed targets only twice in 44 quarters. The key lesson was not just to hit numbers but to explain shortfalls with honesty and corrective action. Employees feel less stress when leaders admit the truth and take responsibility than when they shift blame or hide reality.

Most importantly, we never took the easy way out by blaming external market conditions. Doing that has the insidious effect of planting the seed that successes and failures are too much beyond our control.

Accessibility and Human Connection

In times of crisis, nothing matters more than a visible, empathetic leader. After 9/11 and the 2001 anthrax attacks, I was consistently present—meeting employees in person, recording broadcast messages, and speaking publicly to contextualize risks. In the four weeks after the first pieces of anthrax-laced mail were discovered in government mailrooms, I did 80 media interviews on TV, radio, and print media.

Employees also need to see their CEO in ordinary life. I deliberately drove my own car, took trains, ate in the cafeteria, and joined random tables for lunch. I held 150 “skip-level” meetings annually (meeting with employees who did not report directly to me) and often joined employees casually in restaurants or community events. As a father with school age children, I was present at town and school games, musical performances, school plays and chess tournaments where I routinely ran into company employees.

Employees who never encounter their leaders feel disconnected and anxious. Accessibility reduces that stress.

Modeling Values Through Personal Choices

Tone at the top is not a slogan—it is lived behavior. When CEOs practice fairness, humility, and kindness, employees know what will be rewarded and what will not.

Simple actions—writing handwritten notes of recognition, attending retiree events, weddings, funerals and memorial services, or celebrating inventors, customer service leaders, sales leaders, and community volunteers—communicated to our workforce that they mattered as people, not just as headcount.

Equally, how a CEO handles personal privilege sends signals. Membership in exclusive clubs, ostentatious wealth, or absentee leadership amplify stress by highlighting inequities. I stayed away from those symbols of wealth and privilege during my entire time as an executive officer.

I once declined an invitation to Augusta National to attend a son’s chess tournament. That decision, though private, spoke volumes about priorities employees understood. I also declined invitations to join country clubs frequented by many other CEOs because they were unwelcoming to women and people of color.

Managing Downsizing with Dignity

Restructuring is sometimes unavoidable, but how it is done defines whether employees recover or remain traumatized. Forced ranking systems and arbitrary layoffs create climates of fear that damage health long after the event. At Pitney Bowes, even when executives had to leave, we honored their requests for one-on-one meetings with me or other C-Suite leaders.

Years later, an attorney who represented many terminated employees told me many potential lawsuits never materialized because employees felt respected in the process. He said that the conversations with me not only blunted the momentum of potential lawsuits, but they were vital to the healing process employees devastated by losing their job needed to go through.

Honesty, compassion, and speed are essential. Nothing is more stressful than prolonged uncertainty, endless consultant reviews, and months of rumor when the company and employees both know that market conditions require downsizings. Leaders must act decisively and communicate candidly and empathetically.

Crafting a Compelling and Credible Vision

Employees experience less stress when they know their organization has a future worth striving for. A compelling vision energizes, but only if it is consistent and credible.

At Pitney Bowes, tensions sometimes emerged between business units with conflicting objectives. My responsibility was not just financial but emotional: to resolve contradictions so employees were not caught in the crossfire. Ambiguity and confusion are stress multipliers. Clarity reduces them. I made it clear that we were going to operate as "one company," and that we would be the leader in providing the best and most profitable "mailstream solutions."

Our company punched above its weight in leading the nationwide dialogue on comprehensive mailing industry and Postal Service reform between 2001 and 2006, when comprehensive legislation was enacted.

Protecting Work-Life Balance

CEOs often work brutal schedules. I monitored excessive evening and weekend overtime work because I believed it signaled that we were overworking employees. That reality must not cascade downward to employees. I discovered one department was working seven days a week to produce reports for our Board of Directors no one read—reports that began to be created at the request of a Board member who had since retired.

By eliminating the unnecessary work, we restored employees’ health and morale.The lesson: leaders must actively guard against unnecessary overwork. Productivity is not proportional to hours worked; exhaustion is a health hazard.

The CEO as Chief Health Officer

Clinics, wellness programs, and health benefits design are visible signs of a company’s commitment to wellbeing. But they are not sufficient.The true determinants of a culture of health are leadership behaviors:

• Integrity and fairness reduce corrosive stress.
• Realistic goals and honest communication build trust in adversity.
• Accessibility and empathy humanize the organization.
• Modeling values reinforces fairness and kindness.
• Compassionate downsizing preserves dignity.
• A clear, credible vision replaces anxiety with purpose.
• Work-life protections prevent burnout.

CEOs who embody these practices are, in effect, their organization’s Chief Health Officers.Tone at the top is not just about ethics or governance. It is about the health, energy, and resilience of the workforce—and by extension, the sustainability of the business. A healthy workforce is not just a moral imperative. It is a competitive advantage.

Moreover, it cannot be delegated. The CEO needs to own the responsibility for a healthy workforce. It is not delegable!!