I’m going to tell you something that sounds like a complaint but is actually, on most days, a quiet compliment. Some of our Singapore SME clients try to poach the Filipino talents we’ve placed with them. Not all clients — maybe one in seven or eight, over the 15-plus years we’ve been doing this. But it happens often enough that Charlotte and I have a standing process for it, and I’ve had to think carefully about how I actually feel about it.
The honest answer is: it’s complicated. Which is probably not what you expected me to say.
Let me explain what’s actually going on, why clients do it, how Kaizenaire responds, and what this whole dynamic tells you about how offshore placements work when they go well.
What Poaching Actually Looks Like in Practice
It rarely looks like a midnight phone call with a suitcase of cash. Usually it’s much quieter. After six months or a year of working together, the client and the talent have built something real — they’ve got inside jokes, a shared shorthand, mutual respect. The client starts to think: “Why am I paying Kaizenaire’s $350 a month management fee when I could just… pay Maria directly?”
So they ask. Sometimes they ask the talent directly. Sometimes they come to me. I respect the ones who come to me more — at least that’s an honest conversation. The ones who approach the talent directly and try to keep it quiet are putting the talent in an uncomfortable position, which I think is unfair regardless of intent.
What they’re usually proposing is: we cut out the middleman, I pay you the same salary (or slightly more), and we move to a direct arrangement. Sometimes they dress it up as “promoting” the talent. Occasionally they offer the talent equity-adjacent perks — a bonus structure, a title upgrade, a vague promise of growth.
Here’s what most clients don’t realise they’re actually proposing: they’re asking the talent to take on more risk for roughly the same money. Under our arrangement, the talent has protections — payroll on the 5th and 20th, a clear Independent Contractor Agreement, Kaizenaire sitting in the middle if something goes wrong. Going direct means losing that buffer. For a Filipino remote professional who’s built their livelihood around stable, on-time SGD payments, that’s not a trivial trade.
Why It Happens — and Why It’s Not Entirely Bad
Let me back up, actually. Before I get into how we handle it, I want to be honest about what this dynamic says about the placement.
When a client tries to poach their talent, it means the placement worked. It means the talent became genuinely indispensable. That’s the goal. We’re not placing people to do one-off tasks — we’re placing AI-augmented Filipino remote talents to become embedded in Singapore SME teams, to understand the business deeply, to own their function. When that happens, of course the client is going to want to formalise the relationship on their own terms.
I think of it the way a good staffing firm thinks about permanent placements. The best outcome is the talent sticking around for years. The second-best outcome is the talent becoming so valuable that the client wants to own the relationship directly. Both outcomes mean the talent is doing well. Both outcomes mean we found the right person.
So my first honest reaction when this happens is not anger. It’s something closer to: “Okay, this placement worked. Now let me think about what’s fair.”
What’s less great is when clients try to do it in a way that cuts the talent out of the decision or pressures them into something they’re not sure about. That I don’t accept quietly.
How the Contract Actually Works (And Why It Matters Here)
The Service Agreement between Kaizenaire and our Singapore SME clients includes a non-poaching clause. It’s standard, it’s disclosed upfront, and it exists for a reason. Clients who try to hire our talents directly during the engagement — or within a specific window after it ends — are in breach.
I’m not going to quote exact legal language here, but the mechanism is simple: if you want to hire the talent directly, there’s a path for that. It involves a conversion fee. The fee exists to compensate Kaizenaire for the cost of sourcing, screening, and placing that talent — work that typically represents several months of recruitment effort and, across our 15 years and more than one million Filipino candidate applications, real accumulated knowledge about who is likely to succeed in a Singapore SME environment.
Some clients bristle at this. A few have argued that the fee is unfair — “I’m the one who trained them, I’m the one who made them good.” That argument has some truth in it. The client does invest in developing the talent. But it misses the other half of the equation: we invested in finding them in the first place. Both investments matter.
What I’ve found, over many of these conversations, is that clients who genuinely want to keep the talent long-term usually come to a reasonable arrangement. They pay the conversion fee, they move to a direct employment or contractor relationship, and everyone moves on. The handful of clients who refuse the fee and try to pursue a workaround — approaching the talent directly, waiting out the clause, engineering a “resignation” — those are the clients I eventually stop working with.
That’s not a threat I make lightly. But protecting the integrity of the placement is part of how Kaizenaire operates.
What I Tell the Talent When This Happens
This is the part I feel most strongly about. When a client approaches one of our placed talents directly about going independent, the talent is in an awkward spot. They like the client. They want to keep the work. They’re worried that if they say no to the client, the working relationship sours. And they’re not sure what their obligations actually are.
Charlotte and I — Charlotte handles most of the talent-side communications day to day — make a point of being clear with every talent from day one: if a client ever approaches you about a direct arrangement, tell us immediately. Not because we’re going to punish you or treat it as a betrayal. But because we want to make sure you’re making a genuinely informed decision, not a pressured one.
What we’ve found is that most talents, when they understand the full picture, don’t actually want to go direct. The $350/month management fee that comes out of the client’s side of the equation buys them something real: a buffer. Someone to call if the client is late with payment. Someone who will follow up professionally if the working relationship hits a rough patch. Someone who has been doing this since 2010 and has seen most of the ways these things can go wrong.
The talents who do choose to go direct are exercising their right to do so — and we respect that, provided the proper process is followed. What we won’t accept is a talent being quietly pressured into a decision they’re not comfortable with. That’s where I get protective, and Charlotte gets protective, in a way that probably surprises clients who think of us as just a placement service.
The Clients Who Come to Me Honestly
I want to spend a paragraph on this because I think it deserves acknowledgment. Some clients — more than you’d think — come to me directly when they’re considering going direct. They say something like: “Ken, we’ve been working with this person for eighteen months, we love what they do, we want to bring them in-house. What does that process look like?”
Those conversations are easy. We talk through the conversion fee, we talk through the talent’s preferences, we make sure everyone understands what they’re agreeing to, and we usually complete the transition smoothly. I’ve had maybe a dozen of these conversations in the last three years alone. A few of those clients have come back to Kaizenaire later to place a different talent — which tells me the relationship survived the transition intact.
I genuinely prefer this path. It’s clean. It respects everyone’s time. It doesn’t put the talent in a difficult position. And it means Kaizenaire captures the conversion fee, which partially offsets the cost of going back to source a new placement for the client if they want to grow the team.
If you’re a Singapore SME owner reading this who’s thinking about going direct with your current talent — just ask. I’d rather have an honest conversation than manage a messy situation six months from now.
What This Tells You About Kaizenaire
I want to be clear about something: the fact that clients try to poach our talents is, in a strange way, part of how I’d want you to evaluate us.
If you engage a placement agency and the talent they send you is mediocre, you won’t want to keep them. You certainly won’t try to hire them directly. The poaching dynamic only exists because the placements are good. That’s not self-congratulation — it’s the logic of what we’ve built. We filter obsessively. We’ve seen over a million Filipino candidate applications across 15 years. We look for attitude above portfolio, AI willingness above credential, reliability above surface-level competence. When we get it right, the talent becomes someone a Singapore SME owner genuinely doesn’t want to lose.
The flip side is that it creates a structural tension in our business model. We invest heavily in sourcing good people. When clients try to acquire those people directly, cutting Kaizenaire out, the economics don’t work. So we’ve built the conversion fee and the non-poaching clause not as a punitive mechanism, but as the thing that makes it possible to keep investing in finding great people in the first place.
Honestly, I don’t think most clients think about this when they float the idea of going direct. They’re thinking about their $350/month management fee. They’re not thinking about the six months of sourcing work that preceded the placement. But both are real costs, and the contract structure reflects that.
Before you take my word for any of this, check out our bad reviews (PS: this is not a typo) — the page exists because we decided a long time ago that hiding negative feedback is worse for long-term trust than surfacing it. Some of those reviews are from former talents who weren’t happy with how their engagement ended. Read them. They’ll give you a more complete picture than anything I write here.
The Practical Bottom Line
If you’re a Singapore SME owner considering hiring through Kaizenaire’s offshore placement service, here’s what you need to know about this topic:
- The Service Agreement includes a non-poaching clause. It’s disclosed upfront. Please read it.
- If you want to hire a placed talent directly, there’s a clean process for that involving a conversion fee. Ask about it early, not after things have gotten complicated.
- If you’re ever tempted to approach the talent directly without telling us, please reconsider. You’re putting them in a difficult position and making future conversations with Kaizenaire much harder.
- We’ve been doing this since 2010. We’ve seen most versions of this situation. The ones that end well are the ones where everyone is honest from the start.
And if you’re curious about how the broader service works — the management fee structure, the payroll dates, the 90-day replacement window — the offshoring services page has the specifics. Or just message us.
If you’re a Singapore SME owner thinking about your first offshore placement — or you’re already working with us and want to have an honest conversation about your talent’s future — contact Kaizenaire at our WhatsApp Business Number +65 9636 2204. Our team will be ready to serve you.
By Ken Tan, Founder of Kaizenaire
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Singapore clients hire their Kaizenaire-placed Filipino talent directly?
Yes, but there is a process. Kaizenaire’s Service Agreement includes a non-poaching clause and a conversion fee mechanism. Clients who want to hire a placed talent directly — whether as an employee or independent contractor — can do so by following the conversion process. The fee compensates Kaizenaire for the sourcing and placement investment. Clients who bypass this process and approach the talent directly are in breach of the Service Agreement.
Why do Singapore SME clients try to poach their Filipino remote talents?
Most clients who attempt direct hiring have built a strong working relationship with their placed talent over six to eighteen months. They want to reduce the management fee overhead and formalise the arrangement on their own terms. Ironically, this typically signals that the placement worked well — the talent became genuinely indispensable. Kaizenaire sees approximately one in seven to eight client relationships reach this point over a multi-year engagement.
What happens to the Filipino talent if a Singapore client tries to hire them directly?
Kaizenaire advises all placed talents from day one to notify us immediately if a client approaches them about a direct arrangement. The talent retains the right to make their own career decisions, but Kaizenaire ensures they have full information before doing so. Going direct removes the protections of Kaizenaire’s arrangement — including bi-weekly SGD payroll on the 5th and 20th, a clear Independent Contractor Agreement, and a neutral party buffer if disputes arise.
Does Kaizenaire charge a conversion fee if a client wants to hire the talent directly?
Yes. Kaizenaire charges a conversion fee when a Singapore SME client wishes to hire a placed talent directly. The fee reflects the sourcing, screening, and placement investment Kaizenaire made — work that draws on over 15 years of experience and more than one million Filipino candidate applications. The exact fee is disclosed in the Service Agreement and discussed directly with clients who request a conversion.
How does Kaizenaire’s non-poaching clause work?
The non-poaching clause is included in the Service Agreement between Kaizenaire and every Singapore SME client. It restricts direct hiring of placed talents during the active engagement and for a defined period after it ends. Clients who breach this clause — including by approaching the talent directly or engineering an indirect workaround — risk termination of their Kaizenaire relationship. Clients who come to Kaizenaire proactively can usually reach a clean arrangement through the conversion process.
Is client poaching of Filipino talents a common problem in Singapore offshoring?
It is a known dynamic in the offshore placement industry. Kaizenaire estimates roughly one in seven to eight client relationships involves some form of direct-hire inquiry over a multi-year placement. Most are handled cleanly through the conversion fee process. The cases that become problematic are those where clients attempt to bypass the process by approaching the talent directly — which Kaizenaire considers a breach of the Service Agreement and a harm to the talent’s position.