Dealing With Counter Offers

80% of people who have accepted a counter offer will not be at their current employer in six months and 93% will not be there in eighteen months’ time.

You’ve done it! You’ve taken major steps in improving your work situation: You’ve gone through the interview process and got a job offer which you’ve accepted. The final step is to tender your resignation to your boss…

It’s almost a platitude in saying that making a career move still ranks as one of the most stressful things you have to cope with in your life along with bereavement, divorce, and moving house.

Once you find yourself in this situation, it’s important to plan and prepare as much as you possibly can in case your boss wants to discuss a Counter Offer with you.

• First, you need to go back to the very beginning of the process and remind yourself of your motivations for moving on. Try your best to take the emotion out it. This can be difficult but worthwhile. Enlist the help of family and friends if you need to if you’re struggling to reassess.
• In addition, what you’ll more than likely find is that you have a number of grievances. Many of these you should have addressed with your manager before getting to this point and hit a brick wall.

So when you tender your resignation, and you do get a Counter Offer you should be in a position to address each aspect of this new deal accordingly. But consider the following when you receive it:

Why all of a sudden, have you become more valuable? And why has it taken such drastic action on your part for your employer to realize your worth?

• From experience, it’s not too cynical to state that the main reason is because your manager does not want to deal with the fallout from your departure! Employers can often play on the fact that a lot of people want to avoid change and will use a “better the devil you know” tactic.
• Does your Counter Offer address all of the issues you have? If so, great, but unfortunately they rarely do. And by “address” we mean genuinely resolve any and all of the issues you have. When considering the terms within a counter offer, you have to look at each and every point that you’ve been promised and apply the above statement.
• What are the proposed solutions? Salary: Getting more money is always going to be an attraction. After all it’s why most of us come to work! But…Why now and not before? Does the pay rise make you vulnerable in the future if a company were to make cutbacks? Is money the primary motivation for wanting to leave in the first place?

In fact, if you look at any counter offer that involves money, changes to the type of work you do, working hours, your workload, your team/line manager, or promotion, and apply the question above, you’re likely to find that any answer amounts to little more than false promises to keep you in the business. The reality is that most – if not all – of the issues you have are not going to be resolved in the long term.

The statistic quoted at the start of this piece backs this up.

As part of the dedicated service we provide, the consultants at Key Recruitment will always help you through this process. We may have a vested interest in you taking a role through us, but we’ve always taken the long term view that getting it right is more important and ultimately more profitable than getting a quick win. For more help and advice on this and any other part of the recruitment process, please give us a call today on 0161 443 0000.