Counter Offer

There will be times when one of your employees’ is looking to leave. This may be down to unhappiness, concerns with the role or have been offered another job.

One way you can keep your best employees is to make them a counter offer. This will not only show your commitment to them, but also save you hiring costs and overworking your remaining staff in the future.

In this guide, we’ll discuss what makes up a counter offer, along with examples and what to include when making an offer.

What is a counter offer in the workplace?

A counter offer is an offer made in response to another offer. But in the workplace, you will typically make a counter back offer when one of your employees’ is looking to leave. They may have secured a new role somewhere else, moving away or just want a change in career.

The accepting counter offers statistics range between 50% and 80% in Canada according to various studies These stats show that you should seriously consider this option with your employees.

The following are reasons for an offer:

• By keeping your best staff, you retain their knowledge and training.
• Saving any outgoings on advertising, hiring, and training a replacement.
• To avoid overworking remaining staff, which could lead to decreasing productivity.
• To maintain and build morale and team relationships.

It’s important you make any counter offers in writing, this will stop any confusion or potential conflict in the future.

How much should you counter offer?

There’s no limit to what you should and shouldn’t be offering. But when providing your employee with a counter offer proposal, you need to make sure you take your budgets in mind. Typically, a good range is between 10% and 20%.

Remember, as much as you want to keep them on board, you don’t want to overspend.

Example of counter offer letter

Below is what you should include:

• Acknowledge the employee’s importance to your business.
• Your sadness in seeing them go.
• Indicate that you’ll be happy to have a discussion in a one-to-one meeting confidentially.
• Make sure it’s not just based on a pay rise.

By having a meeting with your employee following the offer, this will again show their importance to the business. You need to make sure you do everything you can to retain your best staff.

How to handle a counter offer?

As an employer and as a person, make sure you don’t take things personally. Your employees aren’t always going to accept your counter offer, and they may still resign.

Make sure when putting forward your employer counter offer it doesn’t have to be purely based on salary. You should consider adding employee benefits to the package to make it more attractive to them, for example more flexible working opportunities.

It’s vitally important you keep any discussion regarding salary completely confidential. If other employee’s find out about any pay rises – this could potentially cause conflict and a drop in morale.

It may also cost you more money in the long run as more members of staff ask for a rise in pay.

Get help your counter offers today with BrightHR

Retaining your best staff is incredibly important. By offering a quality counter offer, this could mean they stay with you and continue their good work. To build a strong working environment, you need to keep your employees with you for a long period of time.

Our payroll navigator will help you to manage your employee pay, creating payroll reports in seconds.

Contact us on 18882204924 or book a demo today.