The perils of accepting a counter-offer
Irrespective of No.10 incumbency come 7th May the outlook for UK employees will remain positive. But don’t let greed get the better of you.
The UK jobs industry is improving. Fact. Here’s one unique outlook on the potential perils of jumping ship.
Guest post by Nick Tomlinson
The jobs market is picking up, dire readers! My ‘recession’ advice – be thankful for whatever grindingly miserable job you’re enduring – is becoming (ho ho) redundant. Companies are waking from hibernation, like prairie dogs. Unlike a slim majority of prairie dogs, they’re seeking new employees.
So… if your present employer is taking you for granted, it might be worth having a snoop around for a more appreciative employer.
What I wouldn’t recommend, however, is threatening to leave, as a way of galvanising your employer into treating you better/giving you more money.
The reason? Once your employer knows you’ve been looking at alternative employers, everything changes.
Now, everyone in recruitment is familiar with the scenario wherein, after finding someone a new job, the candidate’s current employer makes a counter-offer to persuade them to stay.
Put yourself in the scene. Your boss sits you down: “Listen, Bob – it’s Bob, right? Kevin. Listen, Kevin. We’ve all been talking, and we’ve decided that you’re too darned important to lose. We’re willing to literally beat the hell out of the offer you’ve got. More salary, more recognition, a new job title.”
“Um, I don’t know.”
“Hey – do you really want to throw away the good times you’ve had here and start again with a bunch of people who don’t even know who you are? Do you, Bob?”
Obviously, in this situation, a recruitment agency has a vested interest in persuading the candidate to take the new job. But this happens to be one situation where the candidate’s best interests and our best interests happily coincide. The truth is that it’s almost always a terrible idea to stay with your employer once they know you’ve been looking elsewhere.
Here’s why:
For a start, you think you’ve just gone up in your employer’s estimation, by threatening to leave. You haven’t. Quite the opposite. From now on, your loyalty to the company will always be in question. It will hang in the atmosphere like a staff party indiscretion.
“So why have they offered me more money and my own special hat if I’ve gone down in their estimation,” you ask?
Because if they let you leave, they will have to hunt for a replacement. That’s your salary plus agency fees, headhunting fees, advertising. And all the work involved in vetting and interviewing candidates. Plus the cost of paying for temporary cover until a new person can start. Plus the costs and other hassles of training the new person. Plus the costs of lost time.
Oh – and who’s going to take over your projects?
A bit more salary and a new title is a small price for your employer to pay to avoid the hassle of replacing you. Correction: of replacing you right now!! Because now your employers know you’re unhappy there, and now that they’re paying you more than they previously thought you were worth, they may no longer see you as a long-term member of the team. As soon as your current project lifecycle is over and your wildly ambitious colleague Brenda is ripe for promotion, what’s to stop them from getting rid of you?
Suddenly Brenda has your new position, your salary, your special hat – and the job you passed up is no longer available. Bah!
And let’s say that the company is forced to make redundancies in the near future.
Nobody – well, hardly anybody – likes making redundancies. Nobody likes telling dedicated employees that they’re out of a job. But it’s emotionally easier to lay off someone who’s already indicated that they’d be happier elsewhere, rather than lay off someone who you know will begin weeping and throwing computers out of the window.
More than that, it makes good business sense to get rid of those employees with question marks over their loyalty.
And what if your company is doing well, and it’s time for promotions?
It’s common wisdom in HR circles that most employees leave their employer three to six months after accepting a counter-offer. It doesn’t matter if this figure is accurate. What matters is that your boss thinks it’s accurate, and therefore expects you to move on before long. In your boss’ eyes, you’re not a permanent fixture, but a loose cannon.
Why should they give you greater long-term responsibilities if they’re not sure you’re going to stay? They’re already paying you more than they want to.
The result is the same: Brenda, who does overtime without pay and reputedly has the company logo tattooed somewhere, gets the job, and you find you’ve hit a career progression ceiling. Meanwhile, if you’d taken the new job when you had the chance, you’d be a Department Head by now.
The question you should ask yourself, when presented with a counter-offer, is: “why did I have to threaten to leave in order to get paid what I’m worth, or get the role I deserve?”
My advice? If another company thinks enough of you to offer you a role better than the one you have now, take it. Remember that the health of your career depends on more than just the quality of your work; it depends on the ability of your superiors to recognise its quality.
A company that recognises your worth from the outset is better than one which only values you when you threaten to leave.
Nick Tomlinson is a specialist recruiter for HTS Recruitment
Headline by Simon Lewis | Only Marketing Jobs
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