When you have received an offer of employment which you are inclined to accept, you must consider very carefully whether it really solves your problem and offers you the opportunity you are seeking before you resign from your current employment.
If you choose to accept the offer to resign from your current employment, you must be prepared to resist powerful, persuasive tactics which your employer can use to change your mind.
It is invariably a costly irritation for employers to recruit your replacement and often they will do everything they can to keep you. They may offer large sums of money or increased benefits, titles and promises for the future. They can also apply strong emotional and psychological pressure. It can be attractive and tempting to accept.
Nationally compiled statistics show that nine out of ten people who accept counter offers have left their employment within six months, either because their employers arrange a replacement in their own time, or because the real reasons for wanting to change your job in the first place have not gone away.
Ten reasons for not accepting a counter offer.
- Statistics show that if you accept a counter offer, there is a ninety percent chance you will be out of the job within six months.
- What type of a company do you work for if you have to threaten to resign before they give you what you’re worth?
- Why didn’t they pay you that before? It was because they didn’t think you were worth it.
- Why are they paying it to you now? It is not because you’ve suddenly become a more valuable employee. It is because your manager does not want to deal with the work disruption your departure could create.
- Where is the money for the counter offer coming from? Is it your next pay rise early?
- Accepting a counter offer rarely changes the factors that drove you to look for a new job in the first place.
- Accepting a counter offer is an insult to your intelligence. You didn’t know what was best for you.
- Accepting a counter offer is a blow to your personal pride, knowing you were ‘bought’.
- When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who is loyal and who isn’t.
- You have now made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on your commitment will always be in question.
The original by Lushia Van Buuren and Guy Buncombe.
