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 and 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.

However, once they know you are discontented, they will regard you as a ‘problem employee’. 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.

The Dirty Dozen – Twelve Reasons for Not Accepting a Counter Offer

  1. You have now made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on your commitment will always be in question.
  2. When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who is loyal and who isn’t.
  3. When times get tough, your employer will begin the cutbacks with you.
  4. When your employer replaces you after six months and ‘lets you go’, it’ll be harder for you to change their minds than it was for them to change yours!
  5. Accepting a counter offer is an insult to your intelligence. You didn’t know what was best for you.
  6. Accepting a counter offer is a blow to your personal pride, knowing you were ‘bought’.
  7. Accepting a counter offer rarely changes the factors that drove you to look for a new job in the first place.
  8. Where is the money for the counter offer coming from? Is it your next pay rise early?
  9. 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.
  10. What type of a company do you work for if you have to threaten to resign before they give you what you’re worth?
  11. Why didn’t they pay you or give you that promotion before? It was because they didn’t think you were worth it.
  12. Why are they paying it to you now? It’s because it’s easier and cheaper for them to keep you for the time being, while they sort the problem out.