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Ethan Pang and Chang Chiz Hau of NTU's University Wellbeing Office share how an 'Inside-Out, Outside-In' approach turned employee wellbeing into a shared leadership responsibility, not a service delivered from the sidelines.
At Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the rethink on employee wellbeing began with a simple but important insight: wellbeing cannot be delegated to a single team, nor delivered through programmes alone. Ethan Pang, Director and Chang Chiz Hau, Deputy Director of NTU's University Wellbeing Office (UWO), observed that employees experience their organisation through its leaders, colleagues, workload, and daily interactions, not through support services alone.
This shifted the team's focus from delivering wellbeing programmes to building wellbeing culture and capability. NTU adopted what it calls an Inside-Out, Outside-In approach, strengthening the wellbeing capacities of individuals and leaders from within, while shaping the workplace conditions that allow people to thrive from without. The belief was clear: employee experience improves when wellbeing becomes part of how people lead, work, and relate to one another.
Bringing this to life meant building ownership across the university. Leaders were engaged to see wellbeing as a leadership responsibility, managers were equipped with practical wellbeing skills, and employees were invited to step up as wellbeing advocates, peer supporters, and champions. This has since grown into a Wellbeing Community of Practice, connecting colleagues across NTU's faculties and administrative units.
These efforts were recognised at the Employee Experience Awards 2026, Singapore, where NTU won silver for 'Best Employee Wellness Strategy'. Speaking to HRO after the awards, Pang and Chang share more on the insights, people, and lessons behind NTU's approach to employee wellbeing.
Read the full interview below.
Q Tell us about the biggest insight or lesson that influenced your EX approach this past year.
The biggest insight for us this year was that wellbeing cannot be delegated to just a wellbeing team, nor delivered through programmes alone.
Employees experience their organisations through workplace environment and culture — via their leaders, colleagues, workload, decisions, and daily interactions. While support services and initiatives remain important, they are not sufficient. We realised that sustainable wellbeing depends on building a culture of care and the capability of people across the organisation to create healthy and supportive environments together.
This shifted our focus from delivering wellbeing programmes to developing wellbeing culture and capability. At NTU, we adopted an Inside-Out, Outside-In approach that strengthens both the wellbeing capacities of individuals and leaders (inside-out), and the workplace conditions that enable people to thrive (outside-in). The lesson was simple but powerful: lasting employee experience improvements occur when wellbeing becomes part of how people lead, work, and relate to one another every day.
Q How did you bring leaders, managers, and employees together to support the execution and success of the initiative?
Our approach was based on a simple belief: if wellbeing is everyone’s responsibility, then everyone must have a role in creating it.
Rather than positioning wellbeing as an initiative, we focused on building ownership across the university. Leaders were engaged to see wellbeing as a leadership responsibility. Managers were equipped with practical wellbeing skills and wellbeing-focused leadership practices. Employees were invited to contribute as wellbeing advocates, peer supporters, and champions.
Over time, this grew into a vibrant Wellbeing Community of Practice that now connects colleagues across faculties and administrative units. By empowering people to influence wellbeing within their own teams and communities, we moved beyond a centrally driven model towards a shared culture of care, connection, and collective responsibility.
Q What challenge behind the scenes tested your team the most, and what did it teach you about building stronger employee experience programmes?
One of our greatest challenges was balancing growing expectations amidst the constraints of limited resources.
The easy response would have been to launch more events or programmes. Instead, we asked ourselves a different question: how do we create impact that can be sustained long after an initiative ends? This led us to focus on developing leaders, strengthening peer support networks, building wellbeing literacy, and growing community ownership.
The work was slower as the buy-in process takes time. It is also often less visible than running events, but it created a stronger foundation for long-term and sustainable change. The experience reinforced an important lesson: scaling employee experience is not about scaling activities. It is about scaling capability, ownership, and culture.
When people across the organisation are equipped to support wellbeing, the impact becomes far greater than what any central team can achieve on its own.
Q As you reflect on the journey, what does this recognition at the Employee Experience Awards 2026 mean to you and your team?
We are deeply grateful for this recognition. What matters most is what it represents.
This award reflects the collective efforts of many stakeholders across NTU who have contributed to creating a more caring, connected, and supportive community. It recognised not only the University Wellbeing Office team, but also our leaders, people managers, wellbeing champions, peer supporters, partners, and colleagues who make wellbeing visible through their everyday actions and decisions.
More importantly, it affirms our direction and belief that wellbeing can and must be developed intentionally through calibrating the workplace setting via leadership, community, and culture. The award is a milestone and a great encouragement to us on this challenging journey but it is not the destination. Our focus remains on going deeper, scaling what works, and continuing to build wellbeing not as an initiative, but as an organisational capability that supports both people and performance.
Q Finally, as employee expectations continue to evolve, what is one area of EX you believe HR teams need to rethink in the year ahead?
We believe HR teams need to consider wellbeing as a strategic organisational capability rather than a collection of programmes and benefits to be “bolted on” when needed. Wellbeing must serve as an enabler for organisations serve their purpose and to do its best work.
The future of work is being shaped by uncertainty, technological disruption, and increasing complexity. In this environment, organisations will need people who can adapt, collaborate, learn continuously, and perform sustainably over time. This requires more than support services. It requires investment in leadership capability, psychological safety, wellbeing skills, and communities that enable our workforce to thrive.
Increasingly, we believe the role of HR is not simply to deliver employee experience initiatives nor simply ensuring process compliance.
Its role is to develop the environment, conditions and capabilities that enable positive experiences to emerge. The organisations that do this well will be best positioned to flourish in the years ahead.
Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section!
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