Why would someone leave a successful business to join yours?

Rob Fisher leads the association that represents the UK's material handling industry, from forklift manufacturers and suppliers to dealers and end users. That gives him a view across the whole membership that almost nobody else in the sector has.

When the conversation turned to hiring, his observation was simple. Every UKMHA member wants the best people. Salespeople. Engineers. Marketing. Operations. Whatever the discipline, everyone is competing for the same small pool of proven talent.

It is worth pausing on where that observation came from. This was not a recruiter talking up a tight market. It was the head of the industry's own trade association describing the challenges raised across his membership.

The discussion could easily have stayed on recruitment. Agencies, fees, job boards, time to hire. Instead it moved quickly onto something much bigger.

Why would someone leave a successful business to join yours?

It is a simple question, but one many businesses struggle to answer. The people every member wants are, almost by definition, already doing well somewhere else. They are hitting target, they are trusted, and nothing about their situation forces them to move.

Which means the burden of proof sits entirely with the hiring business.

Most companies spend a great deal of time and money marketing their products, services and brand to customers. The messaging is refined over years, the materials are polished and the story is told consistently at every exhibition and in every tender.

Very few spend the same time marketing themselves as an employer.

The result is a strange imbalance. A prospect researching your products finds years of carefully built evidence. A candidate researching you as an employer often finds a job advert, a salary band and a two paragraph company description written the day the vacancy opened.

Your employer value proposition is not your salary, company car or bonus scheme. Any competitor can match those in an afternoon, and the strongest candidates usually have them already.

It is the reason talented people choose you over the competitor down the road. The direction of the business. The calibre of the leadership. What someone will learn, own and become in three years with you that they could not where they are now.

That is far harder to copy, which is exactly why it wins.

In today's market, attracting great people starts long before you advertise a vacancy.

By the time a role goes live, the best candidates have usually already formed a view of your business. They have met your people at trade shows, competed against your salespeople, read what your leaders publish and heard how you treat staff from colleagues who have worked with you.

The businesses winning the best talent are not necessarily paying the most. They are giving candidates the clearest reason to join.

Almost every business in material handling says its people are its biggest asset. The ones that consistently win the best people treat that claim like any other commercial message: something to be proven, invested in and told well.

The question Rob put on the table is the place to start. If you cannot answer it in one sentence, neither can the candidate you are trying to hire.

Rob Fisher is Chief Executive Officer of the UK Material Handling Association (UKMHA), the trade association representing the UK's material handling industry. Its membership spans forklift manufacturers, suppliers, dealers and end users, and the association provides business support, professional development, market intelligence and networking for the sector, alongside safety campaigns such as National Forklift Safety Day.

Rich Evans is Co-Founder of Evara Consultancy, a commercial growth advisory and executive search partner specialising in the UK and European intralogistics sector. Evara works with founders, investors and executive leadership teams on commercial growth, leadership strategy and executive appointments, while publishing conversations that explore the future of sales, marketing and leadership within industrial automation.

This article is part of the Evara Executive Intralogistics Conversations series, where industry leaders share ideas shaping the future of intralogistics, automation and commercial leadership.