How we supported the evolution of service culture into a school-wide employee experience at NUS Medicine
A multi-year engagement that helped NUS Medicine evolve service culture into a shared, school-wide employee experience through research, storytelling, and experience-led activation.
The mission
Our mission with NUS Medicine was to strengthen and evolve its service culture, moving from a unit-led initiative to a shared, school-wide employee experience.
In 2024, this work focused on reinforcing service excellence through the Making A Difference That Matters (MDM) initiative, building on earlier foundations such as SQ Score and service recognition. From 2025 onwards, the scope expanded to support a more integrated direction under ENIL (Elevating NUSMed – Impacting Lives), bringing together Making A Difference That Matters (MDM), Learning & Development (L&D), and Health & Wellbeing Initiatives (HWI) under a single strategic umbrella.
This evolution reflected a broader shift in intent — from celebrating service excellence alone to anchoring everyday behaviours, civility, and psychological safety as part of the overall employee experience. As part of this, the work extended to support HWI’s Our Kind of Workplace (OKW) Civility Campaign, which establishes a workplace culture where everyone feels respected, supported, and empowered to contribute their best.
The Brain Juice approach
Our approach centred on integration rather than fragmentation, ensuring that culture, behaviour, learning, and wellbeing were not communicated as separate initiatives, but experienced as a coherent whole.
We worked closely with stakeholders across units to align initiatives under shared values and behavioural expectations, including contributions to and application of the LIFT framework. Research and insight gathering formed a key foundation, with focus group discussions and targeted surveys surfacing real staff experiences, behavioural gaps, and areas of tension related to service, civility, psychological safety, and learning. These insights informed not only programme messaging, but also the identification of opportunities to strengthen learning pathways and everyday development across the organisation.
These findings were translated into tangible, everyday touchpoints. Rather than relying on top-down messaging, we used experience-led activation and visual storytelling to make abstract ideas — such as service excellence, respectful workplace behaviours, and continuous learning — visible, human, and relatable. This included the Service Odyssey, a fun online learning game designed to make learning enjoyable, impactful, and sustainable, while fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
From 2024 to 2025, we also developed illustrated educational graphics and comics for EDMs and school-wide use. The OKW comics, in particular, were designed to address civility and psychological safety in an accessible, non-preachy way, grounded in real scenarios surfaced through research.
Across phases, the approach remained consistent: build from insight, design for participation, and create experiences that invite reflection and learning rather than instruction.
Our role
We supported NUS Medicine across the strategy, design, and activation of its service culture and employee experience initiatives over multiple years.
Our role included:
- Supporting the translation of institutional goals into clear cultural narratives aligned with NUS Medicine’s evolving identity.
- Designing and facilitating engagement formats that surfaced staff insights and informed programme development.
- Conceptualising and delivering community engagement activations, including Service Excellence Festival (SEF) 2024, which celebrated a culture of care and service excellence.
- Leading the creative direction for the 2025 concept “Through the Open Window”, a narrative-led approach that spotlighted the people behind NUSMed’s service culture and the values guiding their work.
- Designing and activating the Service Star Digital Board as a platform for peer recognition.
- Planning and supporting activations, including the 7 May 2025 pop-up and LIFT Fest on 31 October 2025, using exhibition panels and interactive booths to bring culture into shared spaces.
- Supporting cross-unit collaboration with L&D and HWI, including the development of shared assets and the OKW Civility Campaign.
Across all initiatives, we worked to ensure that service culture was not positioned as a standalone campaign but embedded into everyday interactions, learning moments, and shared experiences.
Our impact
The work helped NUS Medicine strengthen service culture while laying the groundwork for a more integrated employee experience.
Key outcomes included:
- Establishing a distinct yet cohesive service culture identity within the broader NUS brand framework, reinforcing that service excellence is part of everyday organisational life.
- Featuring staff as the faces of creative assets and content — through awards profiling, exhibition panels, EDMs, and storytelling — built authenticity, pride, and a sense of shared ownership.
- Gathering deeper insights from over 100 staff members across departments and levels through focus group discussions and targeted surveys, informing both the Service Odyssey game and the OKW Civility Campaign.
- Driving active engagement through a mix of physical and digital touchpoints:
- Service Star Digital Board: 50+ peer messages as of 21 February 2025
- Leaders Summit: 73 academic and administrative leaders attended
- Service Excellence Festival 2024: approximately 300 staff attended, with an NPS of 46
- Pop-up activations and LIFT Fest: approximately 350 staff engaged, using sustainable exhibition materials
- Campaign videos: over 150 engagements measured through views
Together, these efforts supported a shift from unit-led service initiatives to a more connected, school-wide culture anchored in service, civility, learning, and wellbeing.
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