By Robert GlazerFounder, Acceleration Partners, originally published on Inc.com
It’s a familiar situation for an employee: You’ve applied for a new job, gotten a great offer, and are excited to start at a new company and tackle new challenges. All that’s left is to let your managers know. But once you try to give notice, they respond with a lucrative counteroffer, promotion, or promise to make overdue changes–all to persuade you to stay.
While it seems natural for a business to want to hold onto a talented employee–and tempting for the employee to stay in a comfortable environment for more pay and perks–counteroffers have poor short- and long-term outcomes for both sides.
At Acceleration Partners, it’s always been our policy not to make counteroffers. We think they don’t make sense for our exiting employees or our business. Here’s why:
1. Counteroffers Break Trust.
At first, an accepted counteroffer seems like a win-win: The company keeps a valuable employee, and the employee gets a raise or other overdue changes without having to take the risk of moving to a new company.
The reality, however, is that counteroffers are rarely a long-term solution for an exiting employee. Many recruiting websites assert that nine out of 10 candidates who accept a counteroffer end up leaving within a year anyway.
The problem is, a threat of departure breaks trust on both sides, and it’s not easy to recover from that. According to a Harvard Business Review survey, 80 percent of senior executives say that trust is diminished when an employee accepts a counteroffer.
This break of trust lingers long after… continue reading article
