According to Richard Branson, CEO and founder of the Virgin Group, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” As a good and effective leader, you are also responsible for keeping your team members not only engaged, but also still loving what they do and contributing to the company.
But what if your employees are still seeking other opportunities? Is it viable to make a counteroffer to keep them? How will attrition reflect on you as their leader?
In this blog, we will learn the different implications of making a counter offer to an employee, how it can affect you as the leader and your team, and why counter offers (when not well thought out) may do more harm than good.
Does making a counter offer address underlying issues?
Often making a counter offer to an employee is done with one purpose—to retain valuable talent. With the changing of workplace norms and environments brought about by the pandemic, employees have sought different opportunities. To keep employees from resigning, they are sometimes offered promotions, one-time bonuses, work-from-home options, etc., all in an effort to make them stay. But does enhancing employee perks answer the question of what is driving them to leave in the first place? Think through their reasons for resigning before making a counter offer because if issues are not addressed, an employee may resign in the future.
What does this say about your leadership?
Navigating the counter offer process will definitely reflect on your capabilities as a leader. When making a counter offer to an employee that is planning to resign or has already resigned, make sure the employee is set up for success. The counter offer should be beneficial for both the employee and the company, enhancing opportunities for continued growth.
Offering a promotion is not always a good idea.
Is the employee ready to be promoted? As the leader, you will have to justify your decision as to why you are giving an employee bigger responsibilities. In the end, if the employee is unable to perform as required, it is likely they will decide to leave the company.
It is not a secret that colleagues share information with each other even when they’re not supposed to. So when the terms of a counter offer have reached other parties, it can affect the team’s morale and may lead to doubts and questions. Be careful: Making a counter offer to an employee could backfire in terms of the overall health of the team.
In some situations, team members, once armed with a counter offer example, will seek opportunities and benefits similar to what you’ve offered their colleague. And if those employees’ demands are not met, they may start seeking opportunities outside the company.
In other situations, team spirit might be negatively affected, making it difficult to raise team morale to what it once was. Making a counter offer to an employee can have broad implications that are tricky to navigate.
Although we are in a new era of employment, there will always be a need to reassess employment opportunities. It is evident that in making a counter offer, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to keeping employees. If an employee feels they are ready to move on, sometimes the best thing to do is to heed their request, not make a counter offer, and let them go.
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