Small habits, big shifts: How Total Rewards leaders can build trust, agility, and business impact

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As workforce expectations evolve, Day 2 of Total Rewards Asia Summit 2026, Singapore spotlighted a clear mandate for HR and rewards leaders: move beyond static programmes and design systems that shape behaviour, reflect real lives, strengthen fairness, and prepare organisations for a skills-led future.

Total rewards transformation is often spoken about in big terms — strategy, governance, architecture, transparency, AI, and workforce planning.

But Day 2 of Total Rewards Asia Summit Singapore 2026, hosted by Human Resources Online, made one thing clear: lasting change is often built through smaller, more deliberate shifts.

From the micro-habits that shape wellbeing and culture, to the everyday conversations that build trust around pay, rewards leaders were reminded that the future of total rewards will not be defined by policies alone. It will be shaped by the systems, behaviours, choices, and manager actions employees experience day to day.

As workforce expectations evolve, the role of Total Rewards is expanding once again — from designing programmes to creating frameworks that are fair, flexible, transparent, skills-informed, and closely tied to business value.

Across the sessions, one message stood out: organisations do not create better rewards by simply adding more benefits, more data, or more technology. They create better rewards by designing systems people can understand, trust, and use.

Sarah Gideon rounds up the key lessons rewards leaders can take from the day’s conversations:

Small behaviour shifts can drive lasting cultural change.
Modern benefits must reflect modern families and real life stages.
Rewards must create ownership, not just entitlement.
Job architecture remains essential — but it must become more skills-informed.
Trust in rewards starts with strong foundations, not more disclosure or technology.

#1 Small behaviour shifts can drive lasting cultural change

In her opening session, Priyanka Murthy, Director People & Culture, Digital InfraCo, Singtel, highlighted one of the biggest assumptions behind organisational change — that ambitious goals alone are enough to drive transformation.

Her message was clear: people do not rise to their goals — they fall to their systems.

Rather than relying on intense motivation, town halls, or large-scale rollouts, she urged HR and rewards leaders to focus on the daily behaviours that gradually shape culture, wellbeing, and performance.

According to Priyanka, many organisations still treat transformation as a communications challenge. They announce a goal, explain the strategy, and expect behaviour to follow.

But real change, she argued, requires a shift from communicating change to designing behaviour.

The contrast is important. The illusion of change focuses on results, motivation, and large rollouts. The reality of change focuses on process, momentum, daily behaviours, and systems that reduce reliance on willpower.

As she put it:

“Long-term transformation is about having endless refinement.”

This is where micro-habits become powerful. Small behaviours, repeated consistently, can create “small wins” that trigger wider cultural change. These keystone habits can influence how teams collaborate, how meetings are run, how feedback is shared, and how decisions are reviewed.

Priyanka gave examples such as starting meetings with one intentional question, creating “Feedback Fridays”, closing meetings with one clear targeted task, or shifting project reviews to include stakeholder and customer impact.

The key, she said, is to make the behaviour small enough to stick.

She referenced the idea of a 66-day habit horizon, encouraging organisations to start small, anchor new behaviours to existing routines, and build momentum gradually.

Some practical tools she shared included:

Following the 20-20-20 rule: every 20 minutes, look 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
Selecting the three most important tasks before opening your email.
Practising two minutes of mindful breathing.
Closing meetings with one specific next action.

She also introduced the LATTE method for navigating inflection points:

Listen
Acknowledge
Take action
Thank
Explain

Her reminder to delegates was simple but powerful: “There’s always a rush to take a massive leap, but you need to trust your instincts and make it small, make it bite-sized.”

#2 Modern benefits must reflect modern families and real life stages

The need to redesign benefits for today’s workforce came through strongly in the first panel discussion of the day, moderated by Meenakshree Nanda, Director – Wellbeing, Inclusion & Diversity – APAC Region, DP World.

She was joined by:

Jacintha Loke, Rewards Manager, APAC, Campari Group,
Joy Lim, Head of Human Resources, Southeast Asia & Head of Compensation, Asia, Société Générale, and
Pheona Chua, Regional Director, Corporate Health & Wellbeing, Health & Benefits, Asia Pacific, WTW.

The discussion focused on one central issue: the definition of family is changing, and benefits design must change with it.

As Meenakshree noted, employees today define family in more diverse and personal ways. Family may include spouses, partners, children, elderly parents, pets, extended relatives, or other caregiving relationships. She reminded the audience that:

“The definition of family overall, we believe, is evolving. It’s no longer just the parents, the kids, the grandparents, etc. There are so many diverse people, so many diverse living beings who are associated with us, and we consider them to be a part of our single family.”

She stressed that benefits must therefore move to keep up with the changes, saying: “It is very important that we also evolve with the times with respect to designing benefits which are sustainable, impactful, and making a difference to the people who are actually at the receiving end.”

When asked about the biggest change in benefits expectations, the speakers pointed to several themes: life-stage relevance, flexibility, choice, intent, adaptability, and agility.

Lim shared that employees increasingly want benefits that reflect the reality of their lives.

"Employees are wanting benefits that reflect their life stages today. They want to see what’s the reality of themselves today; not tomorrow or not yesterday."

Chua added that family formation is no longer linear, and organisations are increasingly redefining caregivers, dependents, and family structures.

This means moving beyond traditional benefits frameworks built mainly around a conventional view of marriage, parenting, and dependents.

The panel identified several areas where gaps remain, including:

Support for partners and same-sex couples,
Visa or relocation support for non-traditional family arrangements,
Adoption and surrogacy benefits,
Fertility benefits,
Elder care and caregiving support,
Shared parenting and gender-neutral parental leave,
Flexibility for employees managing sudden caregiving needs, and
Pet-related support, where relevant to workforce needs.

On fertility benefits, Chua noted that more people across Asia are delaying parenthood, often because of financial security, housing affordability, childcare costs, and caregiving responsibilities.

As a result, fertility benefits are emerging as an important area of support — but one that requires careful design, affordability considerations, and a clear benefits philosophy.

"I think it's important as employers to get a good understanding of the market landscape in order to design a benefit that can provide access, yet remain compliant."

Loke also touched on the importance of language. For example, she shared, organisations should think of leave for parents as parental leave instead of maternity leave or paternity leave, and avoid overly gender-specific wording where possible.

The broader point was that modern family benefits require both inclusivity and governance. Loke described the balance as “80% gatekeeper, 20% discretion” — meaning policies need structure, but rewards professionals must also have room to respond to real-life employee situations with empathy and intent.

The panel also stressed the role of psychological safety, acknowledging that employees need to feel comfortable telling managers when caregiving responsibilities arise, and organisations need to create enough flexibility for employees to manage work and home life without fear.

Ultimately, per the consensus, the success of emerging benefits should not be judged by how attractive they look in a policy document. As Lim highlighted, organisations need to look at whether employees understand the benefit, whether they use it, whether it meets real needs, and whether it can be implemented fairly and sustainably.

#3 Rewards must create ownership, not just entitlement

A recurring theme across Day 2 was the need for rewards leaders to connect Total Rewards more directly to business outcomes, employee experience, and ownership.

In his presentation, Uday Burra, Head of People Care, APJ and India, Nokia, challenged delegates to rethink total rewards from an entitlement mindset to an ownership mindset.

He explained that talent and reward strategies often operate across two sets of expectations.

At the macro level, organisations ask:

How do we make this fair?
How do we ensure structure and consistency?
How much should we budget?

At the micro level, employees ask:

Am I valued?
Am I doing meaningful work?
Do I have a future here?

"From the organisation side, we feel we are investing in people a lot more and doing very well for them – but then one fine day the same person quits. What happened? Probably we forgot to tell the person that we also care.”

For Uday, the gap is not necessarily in strategy. The gap is in experience. Today’s workforce spans generations, geographies, time zones, cultures, and life stages. Employees may hold the same role or title but have very different personal realities and expectations.

He challenged traditional segmentation approaches that focus too narrowly on groups such as “high potential”, “critical talent”, or “leadership”, cautioning that such labels can exclude large parts of the workforce from investment.

Instead, he encouraged organisations to shift the question from “Who deserves investment?” to “How do we unlock the potential of everyone?”

This is especially important as AI changes the shape of work. Burra noted that entry-level job scopes are already being disrupted, and organisations may need to rethink how they hire, develop, and reward talent in the years ahead.

To build an ownership mindset, he highlighted four behaviours:

Stay above the line — act and own the outcome instead of making excuses.
Treat the work as yours — build psychological ownership.
Pair autonomy with accountability — give people room to act while owning results.
Drive your own growth — seek stretch opportunities and own problems end-to-end.

He also called for a move away from annual, one-size-fits-all reward cycles towards more continuous reward models that recognise contribution in real time and give employees a genuine stake in outcomes.

He concluded his presentation with four recommendations:

Anchor rewards on the “why”.
Make rewards agile.
Make rewards ownership-driven.
Pilot new programmes before scaling.

This theme continued in a later presentation by Irene Goh, Head of Rewards, Recognition and Wellbeing, United World College of South East Asia, who positioned total rewards as a strategic lever for performance rather than a support function.

She posed a guiding question for the audience: “For every dollar we spend, are we driving value?”

Goh then encouraged rewards leaders to assess whether their frameworks support growth, performance, talent attraction, engagement, retention, and organisational impact. She outlined a five-step reward audit process:

Define objectives — clarify what the organisation wants to achieve.
Benchmark — assess market competitiveness across pay and benefits.
Evaluate internal equity — understand whether pay is fair across the organisation.
Assess ROI — compare spend with impact.
Create action plans — close gaps and improve outcomes.

She also stressed that total rewards should not operate in silos. Rewards leaders need to work closely with Talent Acquisition, HR, wellbeing teams, and business leaders to create a cohesive employee value proposition.

Her reminder was clear:

“The power to build a thriving, high-performing workforce is in all our hands.”

#4 Job architecture remains essential — but it must become more skills-informed

The question of whether job architecture remains relevant took centre stage in a panel moderated by Ker Ying Tiang, Senior People Partner, AMEA, Convatec.

He was joined by:

Jie Li, Senior Total Rewards Manager, Asia, Middle East & Africa, Levi Strauss & Co.,
Brenda Khon, Deputy General Manager, Compensation & Benefits, Pacific International Lines, and
Hans Han, Head of Regional Rewards, Director COE – Asia Pacific, STMicroelectronics.

The panel explored whether traditional job architecture is still fit for purpose — or whether it risks holding organisations back in a more skills-driven world.

The answer was nuanced: job architecture is not going away, but it must evolve.

Khon noted that the right model depends heavily on industry context. Highly regulated and structured industries may still benefit from more traditional job architecture, while creative, technology, or skills-intensive industries may need more flexible, skills-based approaches.

“In highly regulated, tightly structured sectors such as banking or healthcare, a traditional job architecture is still likely to work best. That doesn’t mean skills-based models are irrelevant — just that they tend to play a supporting role. By contrast, in creative agencies, high‑tech, and other skills‑intensive industries, a more flexible, skills‑based architecture is often a much better fit with how work actually gets done.”

Han reinforced the point that existing job architecture should not simply be discarded, stressing that “the existing job architecture that you have is not going to go away. It’s more about looking at how we evolve.”

"At the end of the day, the existing job architecture that you have is not going to go away. It's more of looking at how we evolve in some cases into the new environment, and how we modify [our approach] to fit the current time."

For him, job architecture remains fundamental because it creates a common language for roles, levels, career progression, pay, analytics, and workforce planning.

However, a good job architecture must reflect the business. For example, if an organisation values innovation, operational excellence, or specialised technical expertise, those priorities should be reflected in the design.

The panel also discussed how organisations can identify business-critical skills and reward them appropriately.

Li outlined two approaches:

Strategic workforce planning — where business leaders identify the skills most critical to growth objectives.
Market-based analysis — where external market pricing reveals roles or skills commanding significant premiums.

Once critical skills are identified, organisations may consider different pay segmentation approaches, such as:

Creating separate higher salary ranges.
Extending the maximum of existing pay bands.
Keeping salary ranges intact but adding dedicated skills allowances.

"When you don’t yet have those strategic conversations — and can’t fully control when the business is ready for them — external market data can be a practical way to identify which roles and skills are already commanding a premium.”

As the panellists affirmed, each approach has trade-offs, and the right choice depends on the organisation’s rewards philosophy, business priorities, system capabilities, and governance maturity.

Leadership buy-in was another important theme.

Li stressed that HR and rewards teams must speak the language of the business and co-create frameworks with leaders, rather than treating job architecture as an HR-only initiative. She also recommended starting small through pilots, learning from early implementation, and equipping managers with the tools to explain and apply new frameworks confidently.

Khon echoed the importance of readiness and change management, especially when introducing newer concepts such as skills-based pay.

In short, job architecture is not being replaced. It is being reimagined. The future lies in dynamic frameworks that retain structure while incorporating skills, market premiums, and business-critical capabilities.

But as the later sessions made clear, redesigning frameworks is only one part of the equation. Once organisations make pay, skills, and career pathways more visible, they must also be ready to explain them — consistently, fairly, and with confidence.

#5 Trust in rewards starts with strong foundations, not more disclosure or technology

The final major learning from Day 2 centred on transparency, AI, and skills-based rewards — three areas that can create competitive advantage, but only if organisations have the right foundations in place.

In his spotlight session, Terrence He, Senior Regional HR Business Partner, Asia Pacific, China & Japan, Booking.com, asked a critical question: how can organisations turn pay transparency from a progressive practice into a true driver of employee trust?

His answer was that pay transparency is not a tactic. It is a transformation.

Publishing salary ranges is only one part of the equation. True transparency requires organisations to ensure internal equity, align compensation with performance and market benchmarks, and prepare managers to explain pay decisions clearly.

He stressed that pay transparency cannot sit in a silo:

“Pay transparency is not a HR problem. It is not to be solved in isolation. It is a team sport.”

The pressure, He said, is coming from various directions. Regulations in the US and Europe are raising expectations around pay transparency and gender pay gap reporting. Technology and platforms such as Glassdoor have reduced organisations’ ability to keep pay information hidden. At the same time, younger employees increasingly expect clarity around pay, progression, and fairness before joining an organisation.

Transparency, when implemented thoughtfully, can replace speculation with clarity. But to do so, organisations need:

Robust pay architecture,
Clear job frameworks,
Regular pay equity analysis,
Manager capability,
Stakeholder alignment,
Consistent communication, and
A willingness to address gaps.

The theme continued in a Lightning Talk session with Sumeda Kaw, SEA and Singapore TR&S Leader, 3M, and Andre Lim, Head of Total Rewards, JPAC, Galderma, who discussed how APAC organisations can convert pay transparency from compliance into competitive advantage.

Sumeda encouraged organisations to ask whether their “house is in order” before publishing information. Are frameworks ready? Is data accurate? Are leaders prepared? Can managers explain how pay works?

She emphasised that transparency is a change management journey:

“Let’s not wait for directives and compliance to tell us what to do.”

Adding to this point, Lim said APAC organisations can learn from regulatory developments in Europe and Australia, including gender pay gap reporting, and use those learnings to strengthen workforce planning, job architecture, and pay governance before regulations become more widespread. As he put it:

"There's the back of the house, which is your processes, your job architecture, your data integrity, and cleaning that up, and that's important, because it forms the foundational aspect of the preparedness."

Finally, the same principle of strong foundations carried into the closing session by John K. Tan, Global Organisational Architecture & Total Rewards Leader, who explored whether AI could be the missing piece in skills-based pay.

His answer was direct: AI is not the missing piece by itself.

Instead, organisations need a clear governance model, reliable job architecture, verified skills data, and a business-led understanding of which skills truly matter.

Tan cautioned against rushing into skills-based pay at all costs. Skills are changing quickly, especially with AI, and organisations may struggle to map verified skills to financial rewards without creating budget volatility or governance drift.

He advocated for an evolutionary approach rather than a revolutionary one.

This means strengthening job architecture, identifying a smaller set of critical skills linked to business strategy, and using AI to support analysis rather than make autonomous pay decisions.

As he shared:

“AI assists the process, but we are the decision-makers.”

AI, he noted, can help categorise job data, detect overlapping skill requirements, aggregate market pricing, and surface insights. But it should not independently set pay, decide equity trade-offs, or own legal, social, and strategic accountability.

Tan outlined a practical operating model:

Identify critical skills
Price market premiums and internal budget limits
Define proficiency standards and eligibility rules
Verify capability through manager assessment
Apply premiums where appropriate
Refresh job and skills data regularly, supported by AI

His key reminder was to avoid the “skills trap”. Organisations should not rush into fully skills-based pay without credible structures. For many companies, the better path is to build a skills-enabled or skills-informed architecture first.

The challenge now is to use transparency and technology responsibly. Pay clarity, AI insights, and skills-based rewards can all strengthen rewards strategy — but only when supported by fairness, governance, data quality, manager capability, and human judgement.

The future of total rewards is behavioural, inclusive, transparent, and skills-informed

Across Day 2, one theme connected every session: the next era of total rewards will be shaped as much by everyday behaviours as by formal frameworks.

Small habits can shift culture. Clearer conversations can build trust. More inclusive benefits can reflect the realities of employees’ lives. Stronger job architecture can support skills-led growth. And better governance can help organisations use transparency and AI responsibly.

For rewards leaders, the mandate is not simply to introduce more programmes or keep pace with market trends. It is to design systems that employees can understand, managers can explain, and businesses can sustain.

Human Resources Online would like to thank all speakers, moderators, 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:

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