When wellbeing moves to the boardroom: Rethinking leadership for sustainable performance

For too long, workplace wellbeing has been relegated to the sidelines of corporate strategy—often reduced to wellness apps, employee assistance programmes, or lunchtime yoga. While these initiatives can be helpful, they often amount to what Anthea Ong, Founder and Chairperson of Workwell Leaders (WWL), calls “wellbeing theatre.”

“Too many initiatives fail because they are band-aids on broken systems – meditation apps while people burn out from impossible deadlines, or wellbeing talks while unfair promotions persist,” Ong told HRM Asia.

The WorkWell Leaders Impact Roadmap, developed in partnership with the National University of Singapore (NUS), challenges organisations to rethink this outdated approach. Based on the first science-backed study of its kind in Singapore, the research analysed more than 200 organisational factors and found that organisational wellbeing is not a “soft” benefit—it is the single strongest driver of performance.

“For CEOs and boards, this finding is a wake-up call, a game-changer,” Ong stressed. “Organisational wellbeing is not a side initiative; it is the infrastructure that makes performance possible. Competitive advantage today belongs to leaders who see wellbeing indicators as just as critical as financial ones.”

At the heart of the roadmap is the Organisational Wellbeing-Performance IMPACT Framework, which identified six drivers of both wellbeing and performance:

The study found that leader wellbeing is the number one driver of organisational wellbeing and the third strongest driver of performance. In fact, it is 56 times more impactful than traditional stress management programmes.

“Leader wellbeing is not a private luxury – it is a public responsibility with cascading consequences across the organisation,” Ong explained. “When leaders are grounded, connected and well, their teams perform better. When they are depleted, that depletion ripples through the system. The organisations of the future need leaders who model wellbeing as much as they model strategy.”

Professor Chua Hong Choon, CEO of Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and Yishun Community Hospital, echoed this: “When leaders are well, they make better decisions, create psychologically safe cultures, and build more resilient, high-performing organisations.”

Another striking finding is that clarity and role empowerment are 120 times more impactful than simply reducing workload. In other words, it is not how much people work—it is how well the work is designed.

Kelvin Ho, CEO of Nomura Singapore, highlighted this shift: “We want people to show up with energy and care—it’s on us as leaders to make the work engaging and growth-oriented.”

Practical interventions include job rotation, co-creating roles with employees, and balancing routine tasks with opportunities for mastery and innovation. “Empowering work doesn’t happen by accident,” the study noted. “It requires leaders to intentionally design roles that offer stimulation, agency and connection.”

Belonging beats bonuses

The study also found that fostering a sense of belonging is nine times more powerful than performance bonuses in boosting organisational wellbeing. Belonging, however, is not about fitting in; it is about feeling seen and valued.

“Without CEOs ensuring a sense of belonging, ideas stay hidden, hard conversations are avoided, and people burn out trying to hide their true selves,” warned Wong Sze Keed, CEO of AIA Singapore.

Leaders can foster a sense of belonging by modelling inclusive behaviours, celebrating individuality, and creating psychologically safe environments where employees can voice their concerns without fear.

The roadmap also urged leaders to recognise that employees bring their full selves to work, with personal responsibilities and challenges that cannot be ignored. Supporting employee holistically—whether through flexibility, financial literacy programmes, or caregiving support—was shown to be 19 times more effective than wellbeing apps.

As Ho Ren Yung, Deputy CEO of Banyan Group, puts it. “People don’t leave their personal lives at the door. Leaders must be human enough to meet people where they are.”

Fairness, too, emerged as a critical factor. Ensuring equity in pay and promotions is 46 times more impactful than perks. As Stéphane de Montlivault, President of Otis Asia-Pacific, emphasised, “It’s not just about being a champion of fairness—it’s about creating honest, auditable systems to uphold it.”

The sixth driver, turning values into action, addresses a gap between words and behaviours. The data showed that when leaders consistently practice values such as compassion, courage and clarity, the impact of wellbeing is up to three times greater than merely articulating them.

“Values cannot just be words on posters,” said Tan Li San, CEO of the National Council of Social Services. “They must be practised and modelled by leaders at all levels, and we must hold each other accountable to live by them.”

Practical applications across contexts

A key strength of the roadmap is its adaptability. Whether leading a multinational, a small business, or a frontline workforce, the six drivers hold true. What changes is how they are applied.

Peter Yang, Founder and CEO of Empact, a social enterprise, found the framework particularly relevant and said, “As the CEO of a smaller business, with limited resources, most of the discussions on employee wellbeing aren’t relevant to me, so I’m really excited to have a guide that is specific to my type of organisation.”

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For smaller organisations, this could mean leveraging flatter structures to foster belonging or using agility to adapt schedules to individual circumstances. For frontline organisations, interventions might involve shift flexibility, pre-shift huddles to build solidarity, or greater transparency in pay and promotion decisions.

From HR to governance: A new decade of leadership

The implications are profound. If wellbeing is the number one enabler of performance, it can no longer be treated as an HR initiative. Yet today, only one in six CEOs takes real ownership of wellbeing.

WWL’s Ong elaborated, “The next decade will see wellbeing move from being a nice-to-have in HR to a must-have in governance and growth. The true test of leadership will no longer be just about strategy or execution, but whether leaders can sustain human energy and trust while delivering results.”

The framework is already being adopted internationally. The UK’s National Health Service has begun integrating it into its executive leadership strategy. Ong believes Singapore can do the same and set a global benchmark.

“Singapore already leads in governance and talent development. Imagine if we also led in embedding wellbeing into board accountability – where boards ask not only ‘Are you profitable?’ but also ‘Are our people thriving?’” she said. “If Singapore takes the lead here, we can redefine sustainable high performance for the world: proving that when people thrive, performance follows.”

Ultimately, the roadmap is both a corporate and a national call to action. As Ong, a former Nominated Member of Parliament, concluded, “The wellbeing of our people is the wellbeing of our nation. This roadmap is not just for organisations – it’s for the kind of country we want to be. It’s time for leaders to stop outsourcing wellbeing and start embodying it. That is the leadership Singapore needs now.”