This document discusses how to effectively counteroffer when an employee resigns by understanding the top reasons why employees resign and addressing those reasons. The top reasons employees resign are related to commute/location, a lack of new challenges, boring work, their manager, or more money elsewhere. To make a successful counteroffer, managers should address the specific reason for resignation by offering flexible work arrangements, new projects/roles, training, moving the employee to a new manager if needed, or matching a competing salary offer along with new responsibilities. However, the document cautions that knowledge transfer should still begin since counteroffered employees may not stay long term.

1. How to effectively counter
offer a resignation

2. It’s completely normal for employees to job hunt and
successfully land new opportunities. Whilst that is
fantastic and exciting for them it can be devastating for you
as their manager, especially if they are your top talent and
you had big plans for them. Don’t despair just yet though.
We’ve listed the top 5 reasons why employees resign in the
UK and how to counter-offer against them, so you can
retain your top talent and valued employees.

3. Before we start, we want to stress that the most important
part of counter-offering (and if we could we would shout
this loudly) is to make sure you deliver on your promises.
If you’ve promised to let somebody work remotely, make
sure you do it. If you’ve promised a £4,000 salary increase,
make sure its paid. Otherwise, you’ll be faced with their
resignation again and this time you won’t be able to talk
them out of it.

4. The “commute/location” reason
Remote working is a hot topic at the moment. Big firms who
once championed it (IBM and Yahoo) are now pulling their
employees back to the office. The bottom line is, if you don’t like
remote working because you can’t monitor performance, you’re
fighting a losing battle. You can’t constantly watch every
employee whilst they’re in the office anyway. If you’re trying to
retain your talented staff, you already know they deliver. So if
the commute is too much for them or the office location isn’t
great, you should consider remote working or the very least,
working from home for part of the week. Negativity comes from
working from home not because the employee isn’t delivering
but because they can feel isolated and the right support
mechanisms aren’t in place. If you can get that right,
homeworking will be a flying success. (Not sure where to start
with that? We can help you to setup successful homeworking
arrangements.)

5. The “new challenge” reason
To really understand this reason, you need to ask the employee
to be more specific. Do they want more challenging work? Are
they finding everything repetitive? Are they wanting to learn
something new because they’ve been in the company for 100
years? Its probably a bit of a mixture of these reasons. Offering a
secondment or alternative role in another part of the business so
they can learn something new/ interact with different people will
give them this new challenge they’re seeking. It also gets rid of
the repetitiveness reason.

6. The “boring work” reason
This is one of the easiest reasons to fix. Look at some of your
deliverables for the year- what could be a realistic challenge or
something different they could get involved in or lead? You may
need to give them some support but that won’t take nearly as
much time as you having to do the whole piece of work yourself.
It also sends a strong message to the employee; you trust and
value their work and effort.
Don’t have anything you can give to them? Speak to other
managers about project work they could get involved in part
time. You could even speak to other managers or HR about
internal full-time opportunities. After all, it’s better to keep
talent in the company working in another department than lose
them altogether. Don’t underestimate the power of
development either. Talk to them about learning and training you
can sponsor them to do. If its relevant to their role and you can
afford it, give them the opportunity to learn something new.

7. The “manager” reason
This is the hardest reason to fix. An employee comes to you and
explains they’re leaving because they just can’t work with their
manager any longer. Dependent on the reason, you may be able
to speak to the manager to resolve any superficial differences.
However, if the employee just wants to get away from them,
you’re left with very few options.
You can move the employee to a different manager or move
them to a different department. It’s never a good idea to change
the employee’s reporting lines to yourself as it undermines the
manager and avoids the problem. Whatever you do, you need to
speak to this manager because usually it’s not just one employee
who is struggling with their style. Don’t forget your employees
are your biggest asset; without them you can’t run your business,
so their negative experiences and treatment should be of
paramount importance to you and should be a priority to fix.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

8. The “more money” reason
On average, new external job offers come with a 10% pay
increase. If you’re able to, match the offer they’ve been given. A
word of warning though, ensure the pay rise reflects the role they
are currently doing. If it doesn’t reflect their role, give them
some additional responsibilities or tasks. We stress this because
over paying an employee to retain them sends a bad message to
other employees who may be inclined to try the same or worse,
they’ll feel unfairly treated. Either way, it will result in an
expensive year for you!
Don’t under-estimate the power of non-financial reward as a
counter-offer to the more money reason too. Your employee
comes to you saying they’re getting a 20% pay rise. If you can’t
afford to match it how about offering them some fixed work from
home days or condensed working week? It costs you nothing but
opens a lot of flexibility for them that their new employer may
not have thought about.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

9. Now for the harsh reality. Once the employee has
accepted your counteroffer, start the knowledge transfer
process. Make a note of everything only this employee can
do; skills and knowledge. Then train up a cross section of
people in your team in these areas.
Why do it? Unfortunately, whilst a lot of employees accept
counter-offers, they don’t usually stay long term. They
have the confidence that they can get another job, so you
may find, in another 12 months or so, you’re in the same
position again. However, if you train others in the
employee’s area of expertise, you can accept their decision
to leave. You’ve also invested in your team’s development
too which does wonders for employee engagement. If
you’d like to understand more about how to setup
knowledge transfer and how to manage a success
resignation, contact us.
Email
info@OwnHR.co.uk
Website
www.OwnHR.co.uk
Telephone
07413 998665
07413 994978