Small Business, Big Talent: Win and Keep the Best Without MNC Budgets
Can’t match MNC pay? You can still build a team that stays
Every business wants to hire and keep the best talent, but for SMEs the stakes are higher. When a skilled person leaves a lean team, the impact on operations and customers is felt immediately, and the cost of replacing them adds up fast.
Larger companies often win on salary, benefits and brand, yet pay is rarely the whole story. MOM’s Labour Force in Singapore 2025 report found that using one’s skills, meaningful work and career prospects rank among the top reasons employees stay, alongside pay. These are things SMEs can offer, and often do better than bigger firms.
The challenge is to make them visible. A strong Employer Value Proposition (EVP) tells people why your business is worth joining, and a good workplace earns the commitment to keep them. That is how a business becomes an employer of choice, rather than simply filling vacancies.
With skills shortages and talent scarcity still among the top business challenges, how can small businesses do this in ways that are innovative and cost-effective? Our speakers will share practical, real-world approaches from SMEs that are getting it right.
Key Discussion Areas
EVP: Defining what makes your business worth joining beyond salary, and communicating it clearly
Smart Rewards: Flexibility, growth, recognition and ownership on a limited budget
Culture: Building trust, open feedback and a habit of recognition
Learning and Development: Helping people grow so they stay
Flexible Work and WFA: Arrangements that work for both the business and the team
Wellbeing and Talent Development: Supporting your people and growing leaders from within
Agenda:
7:00 PM – Registration
7:15 PM – Panel Discussion: Small Business, Big Talent: Win and Keep the Best Without MNC Budgets
7:45 PM – Q&A
8:00 PM – Networking
Who it’s for:
SME Owners, Founders, Business and HR Leaders who are hiring, facing turnover or planning their first hires
Meet the Panel:
Guest Speakers:
Founder & Managing Director
Altus People Advisory
Former Head of HR, Jewel Changi Airport | Former Head of Total Rewards, Changi Airport Group | Former Director, Carrots Consulting | Previously Mediacorp & Mercer
Vishal brings close to 20 years of HR, compensation and rewards experience across Singapore and the Asia-Pacific region, spanning both major organisations and leading HR consulting firms.
Before founding Altus People Advisory, Vishal held two significant leadership responsibilities concurrently:
Head of Human Resources, Jewel Changi Airport
Head of Total Rewards, Performance & Workforce Planning, Changi Airport Group
In both roles, he worked directly with senior leadership, Boards and Remuneration Committees on people, organisation and reward matters.
His earlier career includes leading Total Rewards and HR Business Partnering at Mediacorp, and serving as Director, Executive Compensation & Total Rewards Consulting at Carrots Consulting, where he advised Boards, CEOs and senior leadership across major organisations and SMEs. At Mercer, he advised clients across 17 Asia-Pacific markets on compensation and talent strategies.
Vishal also holds an MBA from Nanyang Business School, where he was awarded the Accenture Gold Medal as the top graduating Strategy student, and is an IHRP-certified Senior Professional (IHRP-SP).
Bringing together insights from major employers and HR consulting, Vishal offers SME owners a valuable perspective on how organisations attract, reward and retain talent, and how these strategies can be adapted to businesses with more limited resources.
Founder & CEO
AttituX
Andrew Chai ventured into Human Resources Consulting in 2003 with zero background in HR. His first clients included some of the largest airlines in the world including Emirates, All Nippon Airways and China Airlines. During that period, Andrew used a proprietary methodology to assess cross cultural fit between new and existing teams using each person's unique drawings done in 3 minutes. The methodology took decades to perfect with more than 1,000,000 drawings database back then.
When GenAI took the world by storm, Andrew's own background in Theoretical Physics and Engineering helped build his own proprietary AI to assess if someone is largely motivated by money (alone) hence not a good fit for SMEs without the budget or require much more than salary alone as retention tools.
He used this new technology to hire staff for non-MNC pay grade for the last 20 years with a track record of up to 8 years for retaining talent for his clients.
Today, his AI technology can produce 1.5 Trillion unique reports and boost an accuracy of more than 95% when coupled with a human in the loop to do interview and personal validations.
So truly no 2 reports are exactly the same making each person as unique as they should be.
Executive Director
Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI)
Alvin is an accomplished international senior business manager with over 20 years of experience in the financial and consulting industry, where he played key roles in various business and human capital transformation projects that have translated to net bottom line growth of USD100 million. He spent over seven years in a regional bank covering 15 cities as the Chief HR Officer and Chief of Staff.
Highly adaptable to corporate transformation, human capital management, and business growth, Alvin enjoys the challenges of solving complex business issues. His practical competencies and influential people skills have been well evidenced in various M&A, transformational, and corporate development projects he has personally undertaken. He has also provided end-to-end leadership in a business transformation and created a new operating model that resulted in an immense improvement in employee satisfaction and top-line business growth. He was also instrumental in the conceptualization & development of a predictive and preventive human capital model that has enabled the identification of talent earlier in their careers and the deployment of these talents.
Alvin has lived and worked in China, France, and Vietnam. He has done long-term global consulting engagement work where he deepened his international business acumen and an appreciation of the need to have a diversity of thought. He obtained his Bachelor of Business from Australia, where he graduated with distinction, and pursued his MBA from the University of Western Australia's Graduate School of Management. He is currently undertaking his Doctorate studies.
Moderator and Emcee:
Professional Singapore Certified Management Consultant
SG Venture Consulting
Brennan is a high-performing certified management consultant and SME mentor eager to develop others and helping SME clients in translating strategies into replicable business results. In the earlier part of his career, Brennan had won multiple Innovation and Productivity awards with teams as well as individual when he served 13 years in the public sector. Brennan had played a key role(one of the change management champions) in winning the prestigious Singapore Quality Award (Business Excellence) for IRAS in the year 2003, a recognition for world-class business practices.
As a management practitioner and system builder, he is backed by 35 years of hands-on working experience in various job roles, industries and countries. In his current capacity, Brennan handholds SME leaders and executives in their Business and Digital Transformation journey (Integrating strategy, culture, people, process and technology deployment). Business owners can count on Brennan as the go-to consultant in developing sustainable competitive advantages.
Click on the highlighted names to view each panellist’s LinkedIn profile and connect with them