40 - Stop competitors poaching your best people.
How to keep your best people when someone else is dangling more money in front of them.
Picture your best person handing in their notice. Out of nowhere, or so it feels. A competitor has come calling with a bigger salary, a shinier title, a faster path. You did not see it coming and now you are scrambling. Then, a few weeks later, another strong performer starts going quiet in a way you recognise and the worry sets in that this is not one departure but the beginning of a raid on the people who hold your business together.
Poaching is a particular threat for a small business, because your best people are visible, valuable and known to your competitors. Losing one stalls projects and drains knowledge that took years to build. Worse, that person often carries client relationships and hard-won know-how straight across to the firm now paying their wages. For an SME, a couple of well-aimed approaches can do real damage in a hurry.
It is tempting to believe this is all about money and that you simply cannot compete. The evidence says otherwise. People rarely leave a job they love purely for a bigger number. They leave when they have quietly stopped feeling valued, stretched or connected to where the business is going and the competitor's offer is just the thing that finally tips them. Money opens the door. Something else usually walks them through it.
The reassuring part is that this hands you most of the control. You cannot always match a deeper-pocketed rival pound for pound, but you can build a place people do not want to leave, answer an approach with more than a counter-cheque and sensibly protect what matters most. Here is how.
People rarely get poached for money alone. They get poached because somewhere along the way they stopped feeling seen.
Build a place worth not leaving
The surest defence against poaching is people who have no wish to go. That is built long before any offer arrives. Pay fairly, so money is never the open wound a rival can press, but do not stop there. Give people a clear sense of where they could go inside your business. Make the culture one they would miss. Recognise good work genuinely and often. None of this is grand and a small business can do most of it faster and more personally than a big one. People who feel they are growing, valued and part of something are a much harder target than people who feel like a line on a roster.
Make the relationship the thing money cannot match
A competitor can almost always beat you on salary. What they cannot easily replace is a strong relationship between a person and the people they work for. Invest there. Give your people real feedback and real attention, not the annual box-tick. Have the career conversation before they have it with a recruiter. Ask, honestly, how they are finding the work and what they want next. Someone who feels known and backed by their leader thinks twice about leaving even for more money, because they understand exactly what they would be trading away and how rare it is.
Keep the work worth doing
Bored, under-stretched people are the easiest in the building to poach, because a rival only has to offer them something interesting. Keep the work alive. Hand your ambitious people the high-impact projects they are hungry for. Give them room to make decisions and solve real problems rather than just follow instructions. Keep the learning coming, so the job in a year looks bigger than the job today. People who feel challenged and trusted rarely go looking and they are far less tempted when someone else comes looking for them.
Answer the offer with more than a counter-cheque
When an approach does land, do not panic and do not assume the only reply is a bigger number. First decide, honestly, whether this is a person worth fighting to keep. If they are, talk properly rather than just bidding. Find out what the offer really represents for them, because it is often growth or recognition dressed up as salary. Then answer that, with a genuine path, more flexibility or a real conversation about their future here, alongside any pay move you can make. People often stay, even for less than the rival offered, when they come away believing they are actually valued where they are.
Protect what walks out the door
You cannot stop a determined person leaving and you should not try. What you can do is limit what leaves with them. Keep sensitive client information and proprietary know-how on a need-to-know basis rather than open to all. Have the right confidentiality terms in place from the day someone is hired. In New Zealand a restraint of trade or non-solicitation clause can hold, but only as far as a court would judge it reasonable, so a clause copied off the internet is often worth less than the paper it sits on. Get one drafted properly for the roles that genuinely need it and treat people well on the way out, because resentment is what loosens lips.
What would you do?
Picture discovering that a competitor is going hard after your top people, waving higher salaries and faster progression. One of your best has already accepted and you can sense others wavering. The temptation is to match every number in a panic, or to take it personally and let them walk. Try the steps instead. Talk to your remaining key people now and find out what is really on their minds. Check your pay against the market and consider targeted, honest retention where it counts. Show people a real future with you, in growth and challenge rather than salary alone. Sharpen the culture and the leadership relationships that money cannot buy. Make sure the roles that hold real knowledge are sensibly protected. Do that and you blunt the raid and you usually keep the people who matter most.
“Pay keeps your people from looking. Everything else keeps them from leaving.”
Competitor poaching is not simply a sign that your rivals have deeper pockets. It is a test of whether your people feel valued enough to say no to them and that part is squarely in your hands. Build a place worth staying in, invest in the relationships a bigger budget cannot replicate, keep the work genuinely engaging, answer an approach with more than money and protect what truly matters. Do that and you will lose far fewer of your best people and the rivals who come hunting will mostly go home empty-handed.
That is the end of the HR Headaches series. I hope it was valuable for you.