Nope, it’s true…they are making a comeback!
At the 2010 Fordyce Forum, Jenifer Lambert led a great presentation on her research based on client needs and satisfactions. One of the topics that came up in that discussion was the resurgence of counteroffers. I remembered an article I had used in 2005 as we were experiencing incredible competition for talent. I often gave this to candidates as I conducted their initial interview to try and head off counteroffer acceptances. I want to offer that to Fordyce Readers as a downloadable pdf to share with their candidates as the situation arises (and it will!).
Counteroffer – Just Don’t Take It!
Picture this scenario: After working several years for your current company, you feel your job has become stagnant. The working conditions have declined, or were never what you expected, your company or position has not been challenging to you, and there is little room or opportunity to reach your full potential. Fortunately, you have secured a new position at another company and you are looking forward to a better environment, management, salary, commute, promotion potential, flexibility, or whatever the benefits may be that will be an improvement over your current situation. When you inform your manager of your decision to leave, s/he may give you an offer to entice you to stay, even promising to match whatever benefits your new position may be offering. It could be a higher salary, better benefits, more responsibilities, or a job title to make your colleagues green with envy. This is too good to pass up, right?
While this may seem like a no-brainer, when you accept a counteroffer from an employer after you have announced your intention to leave, what you have really done is accepted an offer to stay and endure the same problems you were trying to leave behind including worse issues arising from identifying yourself as a dissatisfied employee who could leave at any moment.
A counteroffer is a proposal from your current employer prompted by your indication or announcement to leave the company. If you have consistently demonstrated you are a competent, productive, and well-liked employee who has not caused major issues in your department, your departure may reflect negatively on your supervisor and their management capabilities. To prevent their own career downslide, your manager will likely attempt to entice you to stay by making attractive offers focused on bringing your loyalty back to the company. The beginnings of a counteroffer may be similar to the following phrases:
The truth is, counteroffers will rarely benefit you. Managers understand the difficulties of career changes and are going to do their best to offer a primed deal to make you stay, but don’t take it! Consider these points before yielding to a counteroffer:
There’s a good reason why employees leave their current companies. Don’t let a short-term fling with counteroffers stop you from improving your career. Continue to clear your desk and look forward to a fresh start with your new career.
Please click here to download this post as a PDF document.
These ideas stemmed from an article titled Counteroffer Acceptance Road to Career Ruin written by Paul Hawkinson. The article was originally published in National Business Employment Weekly in 1983 and later published in The Wall Street Journal in 1998.
