The realities of accepting a counter-offer
By Mitch Read
As the market has swung significantly to a candidate driven market from a client driven market, so has the frequency of the dreaded Counter-offer. This obstacle has become more prevalent in the last 2 years due to the shortfall in talent being available, against the rising numbers of vacancies as the corporate world begins to grow.
So, once you have made the decision to stay at your current company and turn down the offer of a new job, you automatically trigger a series of events that you need to consider carefully as this will have a huge bearing on whether it’s a short-, medium- or long-term future going forward.
Whenever I speak with candidates at this point of the exit strategy, I always warn of the unexpected, as you will be surprised by how people will react to this heavy blow of news, some will be pleasant, but the vast majority will not be.
The first stage of this announcement will see a range of emotions starting with shock, swiftly moving to disappointment, then anger to panic and with a lot of businesses the easy thing to do is to chuck a few extra thousand at the problem rather than understand why that person has initiated these proceedings.
As a point of reference, the statistic that is the most shocking is that over 85% of candidates will leave a company within the first year of accepting a counter offer due to a number of factors
- The counter-offer that was offered never materialises
- The counter-offer is nothing like offered, that includes promotion or salary increase
- By accepting the counter-offer I have painted a target on the back of my head, as KPIs will certainly increase
- The trust band is broken between Employer and Employee (every time the phone rings who is it?)
- The trust band amongst team members is broken and never feels the same environment
- Questions about loyalty
- The new business that made the original offer will more than likely not pursue you again.
Whenever you are at this stage of the onboarding process, please consider what compelled you to have a conversation with the new business in the first place. If the issues are genuine and can be fixed you need to ask yourself, why haven’t these been addressed before and only now after I have resigned are they asking the questions.
Underlying issues are not solved by a counter offer, think about your options before committing to a decision. Food for thought