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HOW TO DEAL WITH COUNTER OFFERS !

Monday, 09 November 2015


Should you accept a counter offer? How to deal with the situation professionally when it arises

You’ve felt dissatisfied at work for a while and have accepted a position with a new company, but now your existing employer has offered you a promotion or pay rise. 

It can be difficult to decide whether to stay put and accept the counter offer or to move on to a new company as planned. We give some insight on how to decide if a counter offer is a good idea.

“The latest research has shown that while many professionals have received counter offers during their resignation process, 39% of those who accepted returned to the jobs market within a year. This suggests that employees who have considered leaving a company and have found an alternative role will not be persuaded to stay long term.

Your existing company wants to buy you back
It is in an organisation’s best interest to retain their best staff if they can, so when a valued team member hands in their notice, managers will often try to financially incentivise the employee to stay. Change can seem daunting and increased pay and progression is appealing, but before you accept the counter offer you should consider a number of factors:

1. Are the reasons behind the counter offer in your best interest?
It is usually cheaper to keep an employee through offering a pay rise or promotion than it is to hire and train a new member of staff, so this may be the main reason your employer wants you to stay. This doesn’t change the fact that you’d been unhappy enough at work to not only look for another opportunity, but to interview and subsequently receive an offer for a new job.

2. The trust has been broken

Your employer will no longer consider you one of their trusted confidantes. If you have been looking for another job, then your employer will see you as less trustworthy than before and could view any dental or doctors appointments suspiciously which may make you feel unsettled at work.

3. Would you have received a pay rise or promotion if you hadn’t resigned?

It is worth considering whether you would have received this recognition of your hard work if you hadn’t handed in your notice, and if not – do you want to stay at a company that doesn’t reward its employees until they hand in their resignation.

4. Why did you want to leave in the first place?

While financial rewards are attractive incentives, recent research has shown that employees are most likely to look for new job opportunities that offer them better career progression. So accepting a counter offer purely for the financial benefits doesn’t mean that you won’t still feel dissatisfied in your role in a few months’ time.

An increase in job opportunities in the City

As confidence in the UK economy continues to grow, the number of jobs has risen in the first half of 2015. If you’re feeling frustrated in your current role, why not move to another more fulfilling opportunity.

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