I want to talk about something that almost every offshoring agency dances around. Singapore clients who try to hire their Filipino talents directly — cutting out the agency entirely. It happens. It’s happened to Kaizenaire. And I think the way an agency handles it tells you more about how that agency actually operates than any sales pitch ever could.
So here’s my honest account of why it happens, what our contracts say, and — this is the part that might surprise you — why I’m not always angry when it does.
Why Singapore Clients Want to Hire Directly in the First Place
Let me back up and name the real motivation, because it’s not always what agencies assume.
The obvious narrative is cost. Client thinks: “I’m paying SGD $350/month management fee to Kaizenaire on top of the talent’s SGD $700–$900/month salary. If I just hire her directly, I save that $350 every month. Easy math.”
That’s part of it. But in my experience — and I’ve had maybe fifteen direct conversations about this over the last four years — cost isn’t usually the primary driver. The more common driver is relationship.
After 12, 18, 24 months of working together, the Singapore ID firm owner and their Filipino designer have built something real. The designer knows the firm’s style guide cold. She knows which subcontractors the firm trusts for carpentry, which suppliers have reliable lead times. She knows the clients’ communication preferences. She’s become embedded. The firm owner starts wondering why there needs to be a third party in that relationship at all.
That’s actually a good outcome, in the sense that it means the placement worked. The talent integrated. The relationship became valuable. I’d rather have that problem than the alternative — where the talent never connects with the client and everyone’s counting down to the end of the contract.
But it’s still a problem for Kaizenaire. So let me be honest about how we handle it.
What Our Contract Actually Says — and What It Doesn’t
Our Service Agreement with Singapore clients includes a direct-hire clause. If a client wants to hire a Kaizenaire-placed talent directly — either during the engagement or within a specified period after it ends — there’s a conversion fee involved. The amount is clearly stated in the contract. I’m not going to publish the exact figure here because it varies based on engagement duration and role, but the principle is standard across the industry: if you want to convert a placed talent to a direct employee, you compensate the agency for the placement work and lost future management fees.
What I want to be clear about is what the contract does NOT do.
It doesn’t restrict the Filipino talent herself from taking direct employment if she wants it. Her Independent Contractor Agreement with Kaizenaire governs her relationship with us — and it’s structured fairly. She earns her full agreed salary (we don’t mark up her salary; she gets every dollar the client pays for her). Her contract has a notice period. If she and the client want to formalise a direct arrangement, the mechanism exists.
What we ask is that it goes through the proper channel: the client pays the conversion fee, the talent serves her notice to Kaizenaire, and everyone transitions cleanly. When that happens, I genuinely wish both parties well. No drama.
The cases that get messy are the ones that don’t go through that channel.
When Clients Try to Go Around the Agreement
I’ll describe the pattern honestly, because it’s more common than agencies admit.
A client ends the engagement. Maybe they cite cost reasons, maybe they say the business has changed. Three weeks later — or sometimes three days later — the same Filipino talent is working for them directly, at roughly the same scope, just without Kaizenaire in the picture. The client didn’t pay the conversion fee. In some cases they didn’t even tell us the direct arrangement was happening.
Actually, let me put it differently. Sometimes the talent doesn’t even tell us. She’s been offered a direct salary arrangement that might be slightly better than what she was earning through Kaizenaire, the client has been good to her, and from her perspective, she’s just taking a career step. I don’t blame her for that. I do think she deserves to understand her contractual obligations before making that decision — which is why we make sure our talents read their agreements before signing.
When this happens, we enforce the conversion fee clause. Not vindictively — but because the clause exists for a reason. The work we do to source, screen, and onboard a Filipino talent for a Singapore ID firm isn’t zero. Over 15 years and more than one million Filipino candidate applications filtered, we’ve built something that took real time and real cost to build. The management fee is how we recoup that investment. When a client bypasses the process, they’re effectively taking the benefit of that investment without compensating it.
So we send the invoice. Most of the time, clients pay it. Sometimes with some initial pushback, but usually they understand when it’s explained clearly.
A small number push back hard. Those situations occasionally lead to the 1-star reviews you can find about Kaizenaire online. Which brings me to something I want to address directly.
About Those Bad Reviews — and What They Actually Reflect
If you Google Kaizenaire, you’ll find some negative reviews. Some of them are from Filipino talents who didn’t like the monitoring software we use as part of our quality assurance process (that’s a separate topic — but yes, we use it, it’s in the contract, and some people don’t love it). And some of them are from clients or situations adjacent to exactly this dynamic: direct hire disputes.
I want to own that clearly. When a client feels they’re being invoiced for something they didn’t expect, they’re going to be unhappy. Sometimes our communication about the conversion fee clause wasn’t clear enough upfront. I’ve made that mistake. Charlotte and I have had internal reviews about how we explain this in the sales process specifically because of cases where the outcome surprised a client who genuinely didn’t read the contract carefully.
So check out our bad reviews (PS: this is not a typo) — the page exists because I’d rather you read the negative feedback and make an informed decision than discover it after you’ve signed with us. The context matters. But the context doesn’t mean we were wrong to enforce the clause.
What I’d say to any Singapore ID firm owner reading this: before you start an engagement with any offshoring agency — not just Kaizenaire — read the direct hire clause. Ask about it explicitly. Understand the conversion fee. That conversation is much better had at the beginning than at the end.
The Honest Version of Why This Is Actually a Compliment
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to.
Every time a Singapore client tries to hire a Kaizenaire talent directly, it means the placement worked. The talent was good enough, embedded enough, valuable enough that the client wanted to lock her in permanently. That’s the best possible validation of our screening process.
We’ve placed designers who’ve gone on to become full-time employees at Singapore ID firms — through the proper conversion process — and those transitions have been some of the longer-term success stories I’m most proud of. One Tampines-based ID firm we worked with converted their Filipino design assistant to a full-time direct hire after 26 months of the Kaizenaire arrangement. They paid the conversion fee, everyone transitioned properly, and three years later that designer is still with them. That’s a good outcome for everyone.
The version I’m not proud of is the one where it happens without the proper process, someone feels burned, and the relationship ends badly.
Honestly, I don’t have a perfect solution. Murphy’s Law applies in any arrangement that involves multiple parties, contracts, and money over an extended period. What I can control is being clear upfront, enforcing fairly, and being honest when I get things wrong. Charlotte is the one who usually spots the cases where our own communication could have been sharper — she has less patience than I do for explanations that only make sense in hindsight.
What This Means If You’re an ID Firm Considering Offshoring
A few practical things worth knowing before you engage any offshore agency, including Kaizenaire.
First: the management fee isn’t just overhead. When you pay SGD $350/month to Kaizenaire, you’re paying for ongoing accountability — performance escalation if the talent underperforms, replacement within a 90-day window if the placement fails, and the legal and administrative infrastructure that makes the arrangement clean. If you want to cut that out eventually, the conversion fee is how you do it properly. It’s not punitive. It’s the cost of a clean transition.
Second: if you know going in that you want to eventually hire someone directly — as a full-time employee, not a contractor — tell us that at the start of the engagement. We’d rather structure the arrangement to anticipate that transition than have it come as a surprise 18 months later. Some clients have done exactly this, and the arrangements we set up for them were cleaner because everyone knew the goal from day one.
Third: the talent’s interests matter too. Filipino designers placed through Kaizenaire aren’t just resources to be transferred between arrangements. They have career goals, income stability concerns, and legal obligations of their own. The cleanest transitions I’ve seen are the ones where the client and the talent both communicated openly about what they wanted — rather than the client making a unilateral decision and hoping the talent would just go along with it.
I’ve been doing this since 2010, when Charlotte and I first started experimenting with Filipino remote work arrangements. The fundamentals haven’t changed much. The placements that work long-term are the ones where everyone’s honest about what they want from the beginning.
If you’re a Singapore ID firm owner thinking about offshoring for the first time, or thinking about converting an existing placement to a direct hire, feel free to reach out. We’ll walk you through exactly what the contract says, what the conversion process looks like, and what it actually costs. No ambiguity. 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 a Singapore client hire a Filipino talent directly from Kaizenaire without going through an agency?
Yes, but there is a formal process. Kaizenaire’s Service Agreement with Singapore clients includes a direct-hire conversion fee if a client wants to employ a Kaizenaire-placed talent directly. The fee compensates for placement work and lost future management fees. Clients who communicate this intention upfront can often structure a cleaner transition. Bypassing the process entirely and hiring the talent without paying the conversion fee is a breach of the service agreement and typically results in an invoice for the full conversion amount.
How much does it cost to convert a Kaizenaire-placed Filipino talent to a direct hire?
Kaizenaire’s direct-hire conversion fee varies based on the length of the engagement and the role. It is clearly stated in the Service Agreement before any engagement begins. Singapore ID firm clients who anticipate wanting to convert a placement to a direct hire should raise this at the start of the engagement — Kaizenaire can structure arrangements that anticipate that transition more cleanly than a surprise conversion after 18 months.
Why does Kaizenaire charge a conversion fee if the client already pays a monthly management fee?
The monthly SGD $350 management fee covers ongoing services: performance accountability, the 90-day replacement window, payroll infrastructure, and compliance administration. It does not cover the original placement cost of sourcing and screening a candidate from Kaizenaire’s filtered pool of over one million Filipino applicants. The conversion fee compensates for that placement investment and the loss of the ongoing management relationship. Without it, agencies would have no incentive to invest in quality candidate screening.
What happens to the Filipino talent’s contract if a Singapore client hires them directly?
The Filipino talent has an Independent Contractor Agreement with Kaizenaire that includes a notice period. For a direct hire to proceed cleanly, the talent serves notice to Kaizenaire, the client pays the conversion fee, and both parties transition with no outstanding obligations. The talent’s interests are separate from the client-agency dispute — Kaizenaire does not restrict Filipino talents from pursuing direct employment, but does ask that the transition follows the contractual process to protect all parties.
Why are some of Kaizenaire’s bad reviews related to direct hire disputes?
When a Singapore client is invoiced for a conversion fee they didn’t expect — usually because they didn’t read the direct-hire clause carefully before signing — frustration is a natural outcome. Some of those situations generate negative reviews. Kaizenaire acknowledges that communication about conversion fees could have been clearer in some past cases. The bad reviews page at kaizenaire.ai/bad-reviews/ exists specifically so prospective clients can read this context and make an informed decision before engaging.
Can I tell Kaizenaire upfront that I intend to hire the talent directly eventually?
Yes, and Kaizenaire actively encourages this. Clients who communicate their intent to convert a placement to a direct hire from the beginning of the engagement allow Kaizenaire to structure the arrangement with that transition in mind. This produces cleaner outcomes for all three parties — the client, the Filipino talent, and Kaizenaire — and avoids the misunderstandings that generate disputes at the end of a contract.