Is Accepting a Counter Offer the Right Decision in the Long Term?
You have just accepted a job with a different company and put in your two-week notice of resignation when your manager calls you into her office and says the company actually had plans to promote you and give you a raise.
Whether these offers were already in the works or spurred by your decision to leave, you now have the option of taking the raise you likely wanted and a promotion while staying in the familiar surroundings of your current employer. However, before you take the counteroffer, you need to consider your long-term plans because they aren’t as rosy and great as you think they are.
Do you want to stay for the long haul?
Most employment experts say that if you are going to take a counteroffer, don’t plan on sticking around long-term. In fact, most people don’t. Statistics show that 89 percent of people who take a counteroffer leave anyway within six months. After 18 months, that number climbs to 93 percent.
While getting a counteroffer out of your current employer means a short-term victory, you should note that your loyalty to the company will now forever be in question. After all, you were interested in leaving.
If upper management has a reputation for holding grudges, you could be looking at being blackballed when it comes to work assignments, taking on new projects and getting the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. There are even many stories about people taking a counteroffer and then getting let go as soon as it’s convenient for the company. This means your long-term future with the company is in serious doubt.
Same old problems and a few new ones
Accepting a counteroffer might pad your paycheck, but it doesn’t solve other problems that had you looking for a new job. A bad boss, toxic working environment and mundane job could still be there waiting for you if the counteroffer doesn’t somehow remedy those issues.
Furthermore, you should consider if the counteroffer will create entirely new problems. For instance, the counteroffer could simply be a raise you were going to get anyway that was moved up on the calendar, which would mean your next raise isn’t coming for a while. Also, how do you approach your boss that next time you want a raise or a promotion? Will you have to threaten to quit again? From the company’s point of view, you may now be a very unappealing candidate for a promotion given your history of wanting to leave the company.
These problems are more significant the bigger the size of your company, as larger companies tend to be more impersonal and competitive.
Raises character issues
Accepting a counteroffer also has you walking back into your job as a (somewhat) disgruntled employee with loyalty issues. Even trying to show you really are loyal to the company by accepting the counteroffer could be seen by some as being wishy-washy or unable to embrace change.
Is it fair? It might be and it might not be. But by going out and looking for greener pastures, you have allowed co-workers and management to think that way about your loyalty to the company. You can think that you’ll regain that trust over time, but remember that 89 percent of people who accept counteroffers are gone within six months. You could be the one out of 10 but odds are you will be working for another company in a short period of time. That loyalty will be nearly impossible to regain.
Work With a Top Supply Chain Recruiter
If you have decided it’s time to leave your current employer, contact us at ZDA. As a leading supply chain recruiter, we can meet with you to discuss a wide range of employment opportunities in the supply chain industry!
