Between 2023 and 2025 NagaCorp, the Hong Kong-listed gaming and hospitality company that operates Phnom Penh’s only integrated casino resort, NagaWorld, processed somewhere between 27,000 and 33,000 in-house medical clinic visits per year.
The result, expertly predicted, was that in the same window, the number of employees requiring formal sick leave dropped at a compound annual rate of 11%. Those two numbers, sitting side by side, tell you almost everything you need to know about how the why the Cambodian operator’s framework deserves the attention of every HR leader in Southeast Asia.
What makes their story particularly useful is the measurement infrastructure underneath their decisions about employee care: a rigorous, data-driven approach to employee wellness that funds what works, cuts what doesn’t, and treats every initiative as a serious investment.
Why Shareholder Value Starts on the Casino Floor
Philip Lee, NagaCorp’s Chairman and Executive Director, has a slightly controversial (but refreshingly honest) starting point for a conversation about employee wellness. “The top data point for me is always shareholder value,” Lee says. “Let me give you an example. We promote a happy, healthy workplace, and we get a lot of shareholders and investors visits to the property.”
“When they move around the property, they naturally talk to the staff, and the impression that they get from them is that it’s a happy place to work. You know, it’s an enjoyable place, it’s healthy. It shows the shareholders and investors that we are here to stay for the long term. I think that gives a positive impression.”
For a company whose entire business model depends on 24/7 service delivery, with 1,658 hotel rooms, 20 food and beverage outlets, gaming floors, entertainment venues, a 2,000-seat theatre, the connection between employee wellbeing is front and centre. That gives Lee and his team something many CHROs struggle to articulate, a direct line between wellness investment and the things the board pays attention to.
The Measurement Gap Across Southeast Asia
The Asia Pacific corporate wellness market was valued at USD 15.55 billion in 2024, projected to nearly double to USD 29.37 billion by 2033. That’s a lot of money flowing into wellness programming, and as the Asian Corporate Wellness Association has noted, clear benchmarks for measuring program effectiveness across the region remain conspicuously absent.
Research from Asia-Pacific universities has found that wellness programs across the region frequently lack comprehensive, coordinated programming and adequate evaluation procedures, with low employee participation, limited budgets, and absent leadership support as recurring obstacles. A study published in BMC Public Health surveying over 15,000 employees across Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam found that Employee Assistance Programs are still a relatively new phenomenon in most of Asia.
Companies are spending more every year on well-being initiatives and have almost no consistent way to know whether they work, but NagaCorp is different.
The Three-Layer Framework
NagaCorp’s approach to wellness measurement operates across three connected layers of engagement, people metrics, and operational outcomes, that together create a causal chain from participation to business impact.
1: Engagement and Participation
Before evaluating outcomes, NagaCorp tracks whether people are genuinely engaging with initiatives over time. The company monitors three specific indicators: whether initial interest converts into sustained participation, whether activity correlates with any movement in core metrics, and whether the implementation model is realistic for the workforce it’s meant to serve.
That third indicator is where the company’s philosophy of embedding wellness into standard operating procedures comes through most clearly. “It’s really putting it into our SOPs,” he says, “in the sense that any wellness initiative is also quite useless if it does not translate to workplace participation.”
This isn’t a throwaway line. It’s the principle that shapes how every NagaCorp wellness initiative gets designed, delivered, and evaluated. If a program requires employees to seek out resources on their own time, without manager endorsement or operational integration, NagaCorp has learned it won’t get traction, particularly with frontline teams working shift rotations across a 24-hour operation.
2: Core People Metrics
This is where the data gets genuinely compelling. NagaCorp’s in-house 24/7 medical clinic staffed by six qualified doctors and six nurses is the centrepiece of their proactive healthcare model. The clinic processes 27,000 to 33,000 visits annually. That’s roughly 4.5 to 5.5 visits per employee per year, which tells you utilization is consistent and high. Over the 2023–2025 period, formal sick leave declined at a compound annual growth rate of 11%.
The mechanism is straightforward and replicable in that employees use the accessible clinic for early intervention, both physical and mental health, which means fewer issues escalate into prolonged absences. The result is improved operational continuity and scheduling stability, particularly for frontline roles where unplanned absence has an immediate, visible impact on service delivery.
Compare this to the broader industry picture. Research suggests that mature wellness programs can reduce absenteeism-related costs by around $2.73 for every dollar invested, but that figure typically comes from comprehensive, multi-year programs with robust measurement infrastructure. Most companies in Southeast Asia aren’t there yet. NagaCorp is, and the clinic data is their proof point.
3: Operational Outcomes
The third layer connects people metrics to safety performance. In 2024, NagaCorp conducted 3,052 workplace safety interventions and 30 safety awareness sessions, supported by regular communications reinforcing their workplace safety culture. The result: the company’s Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR), which measures how many injuries per million hours worked are serious enough to keep someone off the job, fell by 27% compared to 2023.
A 27% year-on-year improvement in LTIFR happens because an organization is clearly is tracking the relationship between specific interventions and injury outcomes, then directing resources toward what’s producing results.
The 24-Hour Kitchen and the Holistic Approach
The measurement framework tells one part of the story, but the other part is what NagaCorp is choosing to invest in well beyond the clinic and safety briefings.
“We also operate a very extensive in-house dining facility for our staff, open to them 24 hours a day,” Lee explains. “You know, they can eat as many meals as they want there, and because of the quality of the food that we serve, I think that goes a long way also to promote healthy living.”
“Our approach to staff welfare, both mental and physical. I think it’s a very holistic approach that we have taken, and I think that is why our staff recognizes us for that.”
This is the connective tissue of the NagaCorp model. The clinic catches health issues early. The dining facility supports daily nutrition. The safety interventions reduce physical harm. And the measurement framework ensures resources flow to whichever combination of these is producing the strongest results. Each element reinforces the others, and each is tracked against the same data-driven evaluation criteria.
The Discipline of Continuous Improvement
One of the more instructive elements of NagaCorp’s approach is their willingness to redirect resources from initiatives that aren’t delivering measurable impact. The company regularly evaluates every wellness program against its intended outcomes, and when an initiative isn’t meeting benchmarks, a digital occupational safety and health platform, for instance, that showed minimal engagement and no downstream effect on core metrics, they redirect those resources toward approaches with stronger evidence behind them.
“Redesigning, or discontinuing, a wellness program is not a failure. It’s a sign of disciplined governance and a commitment to continuous improvement.”
The lessons from this process are worth spelling out, because they apply to any organization regardless of whether you’re running a 6,000-person integrated resort or a 200-person regional office:
Design for practicality and access. Programs must be tailored, highly accessible, and respect the operational rhythm of frontline teams. NagaCorp found that direct, face-to-face engagement on the work floor consistently yielded stronger results than digital-first approaches for their operational workforce.
Leadership engagement is non-negotiable. Consistent endorsement and reinforcement by managers and supervisors drives meaningful participation. An executive announcement isn’t sufficient, middle managers need to model and reinforce wellness as part of daily operations.
Build measurement into the blueprint. A clear framework for evaluation, established before launch, is essential for making evidence-based decisions about a program’s continuation.
Observable outcomes only. NagaCorp consistently prioritizes interventions that produce practical, observable benefits over those with theoretical appeal but low adoption or unclear impact.
Communicating Wellness: Different Messages for Different People
NagaCorp has also developed a segmented approach to wellness communication that acknowledges a message that lands with a shift worker on a gaming floor will not land the same way with a department head reviewing quarterly data.
For frontline and operational teams, communication is simple, practical, and delivered during shift briefings or via accessible channels like WhatsApp. NagaCorp avoids non-urgent communication outside working hours to protect rest time, a small detail that signals genuine respect for the boundary between work and recovery. Engagement peaks with on-the-floor demonstrations and real-time guidance rather than self-directed learning modules.
For office-based and knowledge workers, the focus shifts to sustained performance, mental resilience, and work-life balance. Communication is more detailed and program-oriented, delivered through platforms like the company’s MyPortal and team meetings.
For supervisors, middle management, and senior leaders, the approach becomes strategic. Supervisors need clear expectations and practical tools. Senior leaders engage with trends, data, and evidence that demonstrates ROI, the kind of information that moves budget decisions.
“Communication alone is insufficient. Meaningful engagement requires leadership alignment, consistent reinforcement by managers, and shared accountability. The message must be adapted, but the expectation that wellness and safety are core to our culture must be unified from the top down,” says Lee.
What Other HR Leaders Can Borrow From NagaCorp
For HR leaders across Southeast Asia under pressure to demonstrate returns on their wellness investment, Philip Lee offers advice that is both reassuringly pragmatic and refreshingly honest about what measurement can and can’t do.
“Wellness initiatives are long term and every little bit helps, most of which can be developed with relatively little cost,” Lee says. “Much of the results are also intangible and therefore can only be measured with employee feedback via regular staff surveys designed to gauge workplace satisfaction and happiness.”
But surveys alone won’t close the measurement gap. Lee’s parallel priority, “Establish a standardized set of core data points to ensure accuracy and enable clear long-term tracking of key data points for transparent reporting.”
In practical terms, that means three things you can start this quarter:
Pick your core metrics and commit to consistent collection. Sick leave rates, absenteeism, safety incidents, employee satisfaction scores, the specific metrics matter less than the discipline of tracking them over time. NagaCorp didn’t build a sophisticated three-layer framework overnight.
Build evaluation criteria into every new initiative before launch. Define what success looks like. Set a review timeline. Give yourself permission to redirect resources from programs that aren’t delivering measurable outcomes toward those that are.
Integrate wellness into operations, not alongside them. The most effective interventions in NagaCorp’s portfolio aren’t standalone initiatives but operational features. A 24/7 clinic. Things like quality staff dining and consistent safety briefings built into shift handovers, means wellness that lives inside the workday, not outside it.
NagaCorp’s story isn’t about having the biggest wellness budget in Southeast Asia. It’s about having the discipline to measure what that budget produces, and the willingness to continuously refine based on what the data reveals.
In a region where the corporate wellness market is racing toward USD 29 billion, the companies that will produce the strongest outcomes for their people aren’t necessarily the ones spending the most but the ones measuring the best.
