Talent poaching heats up in Singapore as manpower dwindles

Employers are paying astronomical amounts for exceptional talent.

Luring away employees from an employer is slowly becoming a way of business instead of an unethical move, as 79% of firms admitted to losing a good employee to another company that offered them more money.

According to a survey by Robert Half, Singapore leads the globe in the prevalence of talent poaching, exceeding the global average of 52%.

“The country with the next highest frequency is China (71%) followed by the United Arab Emirates (65%) and Japan (65%),” the survey said.

Stella Tang, managing director of Robert Half Singapore said talent poaching has always existed, but has recently been aggravated by the tight labour market.

“Not every employee is going to be poached. It is usually senior level professionals that bring experience, a track record of success and potentially even business with them,” Tang said.

As top-level employees who are already on good remuneration packages are more likely to be poached, Tang said employers have to ramp up their offers considerable to entice these employees to move.

“The amount of extra money they earn is usually around 5 to 10% more, but we have seen cases where candidates have been offered 20% above their current salary to jump to another company,” Tang said.

“The competition for these highly sought-after executives is pushing their value up. At the other end of the scale, mid to entry level positions are seeing only modest salary rises this year,” Tang added.

Meanwhile, a jaw-dropping 95% of companies said they had to boost their offer to win over a candidate in the last year, while 7% admitted that they tend to offer more than they planned.

“The need to pay more to secure talented employees is more common among small companies with fewer than 250 employees where 58 per cent either always or frequently offered more,” Tang said.