Hardwiring psychological safety into workplace culture is crucial: StarHub’s Tan Toi Chia

In an impactful keynote session at Corporate Wellbeing Asia, Tan Toi Chia, Chief of People, Organisation, and Communications, StarHub, highlighted ways to workplace wellbeing amidst a volatile landscape. Sabarish Prasad reports.

How would you describe your workplace wellbeing today in just one word?

This was the question that Tan Toi Chia, Chief of People, Organisation, and Communications, StarHub, posed to a 100+ strong audience at HRO’s Corporate Wellbeing Asia conference, held at Shangri-La Singapore on 8 October 2025.

Noting the variance in responses, Toi Chia commented that, indeed, one of the biggest challenges for organisations in establishing a top-tier wellbeing programme are the changing faces within the workforce population. Whether it’s the senior leaders making the big decisions, middle management folks, or the brave specialists on the coalface – they, and their needs, change often.

To expand on this, he has observed three main barriers to creating a culture of psychological safety at the workplace:

1. Ambiguity - Lack of clarity in communications can erode trust and cause frustration with the workforce.
2. Outdated systems that have been designed for the company’s efficiency, rather than ones are tailored to people.
3. Fear of speaking up, such that employees remain silent about their concerns and challenges faced.

As such, for the benefit of all attendees and readers, Toi Chia highlighted three pillars which underscore the culture of psychological safety at StarHub. Read on for the session coverage by the HRO team.

Back to basics – addressing workforce frustrations effectively

Toi Chia shared how StarHub goes beyond an “open-door” policy to a “no-door policy” – where senior leadership is called upon as needed. This approach allows the leaders to truly see and feel the frustration of their employees, and propagate the sense of openness and availability to have conversations.

It is also part of the bigger culture transformation initiative the team has placed underway, titled ‘The StarHub Way’. Launched in July 2024, the programme strives to build trust and foster cross-functional collaboration, promote communication around the company’s strategic initiatives, and strengthen shared purpose and alignment with organisational goals.

At its core, it focuses on six daily behaviours that turn clarity into impact: listen, understand, ideate, debate, commit, and reflect. These behaviours guide how employees work together and make decisions; thus, helping to cultivate a culture of agility and innovation within a hybrid work environment while fostering respect and trust across teams.

Better by design – going beyond to serve people, not just the business

Next, our esteemed speaker emphasised the importance of the environment created for employees’ wellbeing – and how designing infrastructure for employees needs to account for both hardware readiness and software readiness.

1. Hardware readiness involves the physical spaces, technologies, and tools that support how employees work.
2. Software readiness addresses the culture, mindset, and emotional infrastructure that influences how employees feel in the workplace.

As part of his keynote, Toi Chia shared how as part of the hardware readiness strategy, the current StarHub office occupies three building floors, with approximately one-and-a-half floors allotted as a dedicated free workspace for all employees.

He highlighted that this decision was intentionally planned with the senior leadership team in order to create an atmosphere such that the office belongs to every employee.

He then addressed StarHub’s software readiness strategy: apart from balanced flexible working and flexible start-and-end working hours for in-office days, he highlighted how design thinking was embedded within the company culture – through which employees are encouraged to problem-solve not just with logic, but empathy as well.

Toi Chia summarised the design of human-centric infrastructure as a discipline – companies need to continuously listen, evolve, and design with care. He invited the delegates to ponder the following question: “Ask yourself this question: What would change if your teams designed work with the same care as products?”

Bolder through care – Make employees feel protected, not punished for vulnerability

On the last pillar, Toi Chia addressed how organisations need to go further than simply driving resilience – they also need to encourage vulnerability in the workplace.

Here are three best practices he puts forward for leaders to hardwire a true culture of psychological safety in the workplace:

1. The mindset that vulnerability enables resilience, and genuine resilience begins when people feel safe enough to be forthcoming about fears, doubts, and limitations.
2. Leaders being role models of openness and admitting when they are uncertain or prone to mistakes – thereby signalling the expectation of workplace psychological safety.
3. Entrenching the strategic lever that is intentional recovery – which allows employees to develop and sharpen their long-term effectiveness as employees.

We at HRO would like to thank all our speakers, attendees, and sponsors for being part of Corporate Wellbeing Asia. Shoutout to all our event partners:

• Gold sponsor – TELUS Health
• Silver sponsors – Intellect | Nightingale | Technogym
• Exhibitor – AIA
• Event partner – Pigeonhole Live