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Against a backdrop of AI disruption, changing workforce needs, and growing pressure to prove ROI, Total Rewards Asia Summit 2026, Singapore invited rewards leaders to rethink their role in shaping business outcomes. Report by Sarah Gideon.
Total rewards is having its moment of reinvention.
As workforce expectations shift, AI reshapes talent markets, and organisations face growing pressure to balance cost, wellbeing, and competitiveness, rewards leaders are being asked to do far more than benchmark pay or administer benefits.
They are being called on to influence workforce strategy, design more personalised employee experiences, build sustainable wellbeing systems, and make sharper decisions on where to invest in critical skills.
On 1-2 July 2026, Human Resources Online hosted Total Rewards Asia Summit Singapore 2026 over two days, bringing together rewards, benefits, wellbeing, and HR leaders to explore how the function must evolve in a more complex world of work.
Across the sessions, one message came through clearly: total rewards can no longer operate as a back-office function. To remain relevant, rewards leaders must become strategic advisors who can connect data, people, cost, and business value.
Here are five key learnings from Day 1:
- Rewards leaders must move from technical experts to strategic influencers.
- Benefits must evolve with employees, not remain designed for the workforce of the past.
- Personalisation at scale requires design, data, and guidance — not just more choice.
- Wellbeing becomes a business strategy only when leaders, managers, and culture reinforce it.
- AI and critical skills are forcing rewards leaders to rethink pay, ownership, and governance.
Sarah Gideon delves into the details below:
#1 Rewards leaders must move from being technical experts to strategic influencers
Opening the day, Michael Piker, Vice President, Global Total Rewards, People & Culture Division, Shiseido, called on rewards professionals to redefine their role — from technical specialists to strategic business advisors.
The key takeaway? Rewards teams have built deep technical credibility, but that alone is no longer enough.
“We’re really good at surveying and benchmarking. We’re exemplary at that,” he noted, referencing the profession’s strengths in pay structures, job architecture, equity analytics, dashboards, models, and reporting.
However, he challenged the audience to ask whether this technical excellence is translating into influence where it matters most.
“That seat at the table where workforce decisions are made is the most important result of our craft.”
He pointed out that rewards professionals often “hand over flawless numbers” but wait to be invited into the room where decisions are made. The shift required, he suggested, is from giving data to giving advice — and from informing strategy to co-creating it.
A key part of that transition is storytelling. Rewards leaders, he said, must become better at translating data into a business narrative that leaders can understand, act on, and connect to strategy.
“Just to have dashboards is not good enough. It’s how you tell the story around those dashboards,” he shared.
He outlined several shifts needed to bring total rewards closer to the centre of business strategy, including understanding the barriers that keep teams locked in operational delivery, moving from analytics to influence, building the emerging role of the Total Rewards Business Partner, and future-proofing the function through new operating models, AI, and capability building.
“Within five years, our profession splits in two: those who become strategic business partners — and those who are no longer working in rewards.”
#2 Benefits must evolve with employees — not remain designed for the workforce of the past
The need to modernise benefits was another recurring theme throughout the day.
In his session, Han Wei Fong, Country Leader and Head of Health & Benefits, Singapore, WTW, highlighted the pressures reshaping benefits design: rising costs, a more diverse workforce, declining labour growth, AI-driven changes to jobs, and shifting employee expectations.
“Sometimes I feel like the benefits programmes in Singapore seem to be designed for the workforce of the past,” he observed.
According to Fong, the traditional benefits model — built around annual renewals and periodic reviews — is no longer fit for a more volatile and complex environment. Employee needs are changing across generations, life stages, and workforce segments.
For example, Gen Z employees may place greater emphasis on mental health support and career development and Millennials may value financial wellness and parental leave, while Gen X employees may prioritise healthcare coverage and retirement planning.
“If your benefit does not move with life stages, it loses its relevance.”
One of the strongest takeaways was that benefits competitiveness is not simply about benchmarking. Instead, it requires continuous listening and a clear understanding of what employees value, where gaps exist between employer and employee priorities, and how benefits support business outcomes such as retention, productivity, and wellbeing.
Fong also emphasised that benefits should be viewed as an investment, not just a cost.
Well-designed programmes, he shared, can reduce turnover and absenteeism, improve engagement, and make employees less likely to leave for a modest pay increase.
At the same time, he cautioned that offering more choice does not automatically create more value.
“Choice alone actually does not equate to value. “What employees value more are clarity of choices, the ease of choosing, and the relevance of the options.”
In other words, better benefits are not necessarily about more options — they are about making better choices, guided choices, and a clearer employee experience.
#3 Personalisation at scale requires design, data, and guidance — not just technology
Personalisation was further explored during a fireside chat on workplace wellbeing and a panel discussion on designing a rewards programme fit for a multigenerational workforce.
How do we move beyond one-size-fits-all wellbeing programmes to create experiences that truly support today’s workforce?
That question set the stage for the fireside chat featuring Cedric Deschamps, CEO, Pacific Prime Malaysia, and Heena Bose, CEO, Pacific Prime Singapore, who explored how AI, data, and human expertise can converge to create more employee-centric wellbeing programmes.
With Gen Z employees in Singapore expected to stay with one employer for an average of just 2.9 years — compared with 3.7 years in Malaysia, 4.6 years in China, and 3.5 years in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines — the conversation affirmed the need for employers to rethink wellbeing not as a perk, but as a strategic investment in engagement, productivity, and retention.
For younger employees especially, the speakers noted, the decision to stay with an organisation is increasingly shaped by more than pay. Purpose, development, flexibility, culture, and relevant support are becoming critical parts of the employee value proposition.
Against this backdrop, the speakers explored how organisations can better retain employees by adapting to an evolving workforce and shifting from a reactive benefits model to a more preventive, personalised ecosystem.
For employees, this could mean company-funded e-wallets, access to health and wellness ecosystems, rewards for improved health outcomes, and greater control over selecting benefits that suit their individual situations.
For employers, the opportunity lies in strengthening employee engagement through digital wellness ecosystems, lowering costs by reducing intermediaries, digitising benefits and claims administration, and using pay-per-use digital health or disease management solutions.
A key shift discussed was the move from treatment to prevention. Rather than only supporting employees when health issues arise, organisations can use data, digital platforms, and flexible benefits structures to intervene earlier, guide healthier choices, and manage long-term healthcare costs more sustainably.
AI, the speakers added, can play an important role in enabling this shift. As Deschamps shared: “AI is definitely a tool, a supporting tool for us to optimise our capabilities, the way we analyse to make us smarter, efficient, quicker.”
He added that while some employees may still worry about whether AI will replace jobs, he believes AI can be used to create value, support productivity, and contribute to business growth.
The speakers outlined several ways AI can transform workplace wellbeing, including predicting health risks before they escalate, enabling earlier intervention and reducing healthcare costs. It can also help personalise employee benefits, improve engagement and utilisation, enhance the employee experience through faster support, optimise benefits spend, improve workforce productivity, deliver real-time insights to HR, and strengthen governance and compliance.
As shared during the session, AI can help employers make better decisions and identify risks earlier, allowing organisations to put stronger preventive measures in place. However, the goal is not to collect data for the sake of it.
“The idea is not to collect only data, but to turn it into action and insights.”
This point carried into a panel discussion moderated by Tommy Loy, Head of People & Capability, Anko Sourcing Asia (Kmart & Target Australia), featuring:
- Shaun Ee, Head of People, Asia Pacific Breweries Singapore,
- Madhumita Banerjee, APAC Head of Compensation and Benefits, Bank of America, and
- Shaun Sha, Founder, Tribe Benefits.
Framing the conversation around the fundamental structure of benefits frameworks, Tommy guided the panel to explore how organisations can reimagine total rewards for today’s diverse talent pools — especially as employee expectations shift across generations, career stages, family structures, and life circumstances.
Building on this, Ee highlighted that benefits expectations are moving from standardisation to flexibility, and from uniform needs to more diverse priorities. At the same time, he cautioned that organisations should not lose sight of simplicity and cost discipline when redesigning their programmes.
He added that the challenge lies in recognising that employees value different types of support at different stages of life. Early-career employees may place greater emphasis on immediate and tangible benefits, as longer-term benefits may feel less relevant to them. Mid-career employees may look more closely at benefits linked to family size and caregiving needs, while later-career employees may prioritise healthcare, retirement, and long-term security.
This, he suggested, reflects a broader shift in benefits — from entitlement to experience. However, he also pointed to a key risk for employers: value mismatch. Organisations may feel they are investing heavily in benefits, but employees may still feel those offerings are not relevant to them or do not meet their actual needs.
The panel therefore invited organisations to move from standardised benefits towards flexible, relevant, and curated experiences.
For Sha, he brought the lens of data and technology into the discussion, sharing that “technology improves outcomes” — but only when it is built on sound programme design. He broke this down into three areas: utilisation, experience, and personalisation.
On utilisation, he noted that technology can help employers identify what benefits are being provided, what employees are actually using, and where the gaps lie. This is especially important for preventive benefits, such as health screenings, vaccinations, and mental wellbeing support, which can help deflect downstream costs when utilised effectively.
On experience, he cautioned that a polished interface alone does not create a good benefits experience. For employees, the basics matter: submitting a claim, receiving the right amount, and getting reimbursed within the expected timeframe. If the backend is broken, technology cannot fully fix the experience.
He then made an important distinction:
“Flex is an architecture. Personalisation is guidance.”
In his view, flexible benefits provide the structure, but true personalisation comes when employees are guided towards choices that are relevant to their age, family situation, life stage, or needs.
However, he also cautioned that technology cannot fix a broken employee experience. A good interface is not enough if claims are slow, reimbursements are inaccurate, or employees struggle to understand what is available to them.
The foundation must be sound programme design.
Madhumita reinforced this point by outlining the need for a clear core philosophy behind benefits design. Organisations, she said, must be clear on why they are offering a benefit, who it is intended for, and how it connects to the broader employee value proposition.
She also stressed the importance of meaningful curation, noting that too many choices can create confusion. Instead, employees need benefits that are relevant, easy to understand, and communicated in a way that connects to their life stage.
As she put it, the architecture behind the programme may be complex, but employees do not need to see that complexity. What they need to understand is what they can get out of the programme.
Closing the session, Loy brought the discussion back to the realities of designing benefits across APAC — where a programme’s core philosophy may remain consistent, but execution must adapt to local regulations, demographics, cultural expectations, vendor availability, and employee needs.
His closing reminder was that benefits design does not end at launch. To remain relevant, sustainable, and meaningful, organisations must continue listening, gathering feedback, reviewing utilisation, and refining their programmes over time.
#4 Wellbeing becomes a business strategy only when leaders, managers, and culture reinforce it
Another strong theme from Day 1 was the need to move wellbeing beyond HR ownership and embed it as a broader business priority.
In a panel moderated by Aditi Sharma Kalra, Editor-in-Chief, Human Resources Online, panellists Winnie Ow, Director, Rewards, People Advisory, Digital & Analytics, AIA Singapore; Ethan Pang, Director, University Wellbeing Office, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, and Eudora Choo, Head of Benefits, APAC, WPP, explored how organisations can operationalise wellbeing as a business strategy.
At the heart of the discussion was a critical question: Can wellbeing become a true business priority if it is owned by HR alone?
The answer was clear: sustainable wellbeing requires more than HR-led programmes. It depends on leadership ownership, psychological safety, trust, and everyday behaviours that consistently reinforce the organisation’s stated priorities.
Ow shared how the right providers would bring wellbeing closer to employees by making tools accessible and affordable, encouraging healthy habits, and equipping managers through workshops on recognising stress signals and supporting team members.
Choo, at the same time, highlighted the importance of intentional benefits design, using granular data to understand employee behaviour and needs, while balancing global philosophy with local relevance.
“Think global, act local” emerged as a key principle — ensuring that wellbeing strategies are consistent in intent, but flexible enough to meet market, cultural, and individual needs.
The panel also discussed the persistent gap between availability and utilisation. As concurred all around, offering an employee assistance programme (EAP) or wellbeing support is not enough if employees do not trust the process, cannot easily access it, or do not see leaders modelling healthy behaviours themselves.
To this point, Pang stressed the need to move employees and organisations from awareness to literacy, skills, competency, and embedding.
“Wellbeing is a skill. It is not an attribute that you have."
The panel also tackled measurement, with Pang encouraging organisations to connect wellbeing metrics to business outcomes. Rather than simply tracking participation in programmes, organisations should ask whether teams can sustainably perform over the next three to five years.
The message that stood out here was: wellbeing is not measured by the number of initiatives launched, but by how deeply it is embedded into work, leadership, culture, and decision-making.
This conversation on embedding wellbeing into everyday work continued in a subsequent panel featuring:
- Isaac Chin, Corporate Director, Human Resources (Rewards & Technology), Capella Hotel Group,
- Kabita Karthigeyan, Head of Benefit Solutions, Asia, Specialist Risk Group Singapore,
- Wynne Wee, Vice President, Asia Pacific, TELUS Health, and
- Moderator: Stanley Tok, Deputy Director HR and Agile Transformation, M1
The discussion focused on how organisations can shift wellbeing support from a crisis response to an everyday tool — one that helps employees build resilience, seek support earlier, and develop healthier habits before issues escalate.
Kabita highlighted the need to reframe how employees perceive wellbeing. Historically, she noted, wellbeing support has often been positioned as a solution to a problem, rather than as a regular resource employees can use to support themselves before reaching a crisis point.
This perception continues to affect utilisation. Employees may still associate support such as EAPs with serious personal issues, stigma, or fear that seeking help could lead to judgement, retaliation, or loss of confidentiality.
In that vein, Wee pointed out that many organisations remain too reactive in their approach to wellbeing, and that seeking support is still stigmatised in many workplaces. One way to reduce that stigma, she suggested, is through meaningful role modelling from leaders — showing employees that vulnerability is not something to be hidden.
Chin reinforced this point with a simple but powerful reminder:
“Vulnerability is not weakness, it’s actually strength.”
For him, leaders and managers must do more than understand wellbeing programmes or communicate their availability. They must “walk the talk” by modelling openness, listening actively, and creating conditions where employees feel safe to ask for help.
He also noted that supporting someone who is struggling does not always require managers to have all the answers. Sometimes, even eight minutes of listening — without immediately trying to solve the issue — can help someone feel seen and supported.
The panel also explored the issue of loneliness at work, with Tok noting:
“Loneliness is an occurrence which I think is greatly underestimated. Don’t get it confused with solitude.”
Wee also highlighted loneliness as a growing workplace concern, sharing:
“As of the first quarter of 2026, 36% of people reported feeling lonely.”
This means roughly four in 10 employees may be experiencing loneliness — a concern she noted is especially significant given research linking loneliness to serious health impacts.
On personalising wellbeing support, Kabita pointed to the complexity of designing benefits that feel relevant across diverse employee groups:
“The challenge is bridging that gap between creating benefits that are customised enough, yet meet everyone’s criteria.”
For her, this starts with listening to employees, understanding what matters most to them, and using those insights to design benefits that can support more meaningful conversations within the organisation.
The discussion highlighted that personalisation in wellbeing is not only about offering more programmes. It is also about understanding employees as individuals. Some employees may seek connection, while others may need solitude to recharge. As Wee put it, organisations need to look at wellbeing on a human-to-human basis, rather than simply asking what new programme can be introduced.
Tok also pointed to the value of a multi-level approach, including peer-to-peer ambassador programmes, trained representatives within departments, and manager training to help leaders identify signs of stress or distress among team members.
Communication emerged as another critical factor, with Kabita stressing that organisations need to overcommunicate the role of wellbeing services, including confidentiality and privacy safeguards. Employees need reassurance around questions such as whether HR will know what they have shared with a mental health provider.
The panel also noted that wellbeing services should be positioned as a help concierge, not a crisis centre. To drive utilisation, employees need to hear about these resources consistently — even repeatedly — so they begin to see them as everyday tools, not only as something to access when they are in serious distress.
Ultimately, the panel reinforced that the impact of wellbeing programmes depends less on the number of initiatives launched, and more on the culture surrounding them. Peer ambassadors, trained managers, authentic conversations, visible leadership commitment, and clear communication all play a role in normalising wellbeing at work.
#5 AI and critical skills are forcing rewards leaders to rethink pay, ownership, and governance
The final few sessions turned to the talent implications of AI and in-demand skills — and how rewards strategies must adapt.
In her spotlight session, Grace Wu, Executive Director, Executive Compensation, Share Plans & Global Mobility, Lenovo, challenged HR leaders to rethink one fundamental question: What if AI compensation is no longer a rewards issue, but a capital allocation decision?
She noted that AI is rewriting the economics of talent through scarcity, speed, and strategic impact. With AI talent structurally constrained and salary premiums rising, traditional rewards models are coming under pressure.
Annual compensation cycles may be too slow. Job structures may lack flexibility. Uniform rewards may fail in highly differentiated talent markets.
Wu also highlighted the risks organisations must manage, including internal equity pressure, cost sustainability, retention complexity, long-term incentive relevance, and capital trade-offs.
Her proposed shift was not simply to pay more, but to pay more intentionally. This includes moving from broad rewards to targeted investment, shifting from pay to ownership, thinking beyond hiring towards capability building, and replacing rigid annual processes with more agile governance.
She also outlined five moves for HR leaders:
- Segment AI-critical roles,
- Benchmark using AI-specific data,
- Differentiate rewards for highest-impact talent,
- Explain the value of ownership to managers and employees, and
- Govern decisions through clear thresholds, approvals, and review cadences.
The theme continued in a fireside chat moderated by Priya Sunil, Deputy Editor, Human Resources Online, featuring Sagorika Roy, Head of Performance, Rewards and People Analytics, Toll Group.
Sagorika shared that organisations need to distinguish between skills that allow employees to participate, perform, and outperform. A skill may be important to one business without necessarily being a universally “hot” skill.
The discussion also highlighted the need for Total Rewards and Talent Acquisition to work closely together, acknowledging that sustainable compensation requires clear decisions on when to "buy" talent externally and when to build capability internally.
A practical principle emerged: where possible, build junior talent internally, but make targeted external hires for critical senior capabilities when needed.
The session also explored the use of temporary allowances for hot skills, with clear communication that such premiums are linked to market conditions and may change over time.
Ultimately, the message was one of discipline: not every scarce skill warrants the highest offer. Rewards leaders must balance external competitiveness with internal equity, affordability, and long-term sustainability.
The future of rewards belongs to leaders who can connect data, people, and business value
Across the day, one overarching theme connected every session: total rewards is becoming more strategic, more data-driven, more personalised, and more closely tied to business outcomes.
The function’s future will not be defined only by technical precision, benchmarking accuracy, or programme administration. It will be defined by the ability to influence decisions, tell compelling stories with data, design employee experiences that evolve with workforce needs, and make disciplined investments in the talent and wellbeing priorities that matter most.
As the first day of the conference made clear, organisations that get this right will not simply offer better rewards. They will build systems that sustain their people, strengthen performance, and create lasting competitive advantage.
Human Resources Online would like to thank all speakers, moderators, interactive zone hosts, panellists, and attendees for being valuable contributors to this event.
We would also like to extend our gratitude to our sponsors & partners for making this conference possible:
GOLD SPONSORS
- AIA
- Pacific Prime
- WTW
SILVER SPONSORS
- Specialist Risk Group (SRG)
- TELUS Health
- Tribe Benefits
EXHIBITORS
- Empatho
- Fitness Passport
- Giftano
- Lockton
- The Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP)
EVENT PARTNER
- Pigeonhole Live
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