The counteroffer: often not the optimal solution
Demographic change is causing a shortage of specialists. The anticipated difficulty of filling key positions with qualified people within a reasonable timeframe has prompted a rethink among companies. While the old approach used to be "let them go if they must", nowadays presenting a counteroffer is a commonly used tool to prevent an important employee from leaving.
Continuing the employment relationship this way rarely offers the optimal solution for both parties.
For executive search consultants, this development presents a new challenge.
Appreciation from the employer
The range of motivations behind a resignation prompted by a job change is broad. From deeply rooted intrinsic factors, such as the drive to develop one's own abilities or the wish to carry more responsibility, to external influences such as difficulties with a supervisor or frustration over being passed over for promotion, many reasons can be decisive.
These individual aspects often converge into one dominant, feeling-driven motive for changing jobs: a lack of appreciation from the employer.
Counteroffers typically include a higher salary, a new title, or even a new company car. One should certainly avoid generalising here, but doesn't the employee often have every right to ask why a contract adjustment only happens once notice has been given? And doesn't this frequently just postpone the underlying problem rather than solving it?
Appreciation can't simply be wired into a bank account, and it doesn't appear on a business card! It is mainly tied to a sense of respect and goodwill from the employer. A lasting improvement in the employee's emotional state is therefore not to be expected in the majority of cases.
Trust after the resignation
The employer, too, should closely analyse the circumstances under which a counteroffer is made. The difficulty of filling key positions is usually clear to everyone involved.
At times, resigning can be used quite bluntly as a method to put pressure on the employer. What is presented as a farewell announcement can turn into an outright threat. It cannot always be assumed, therefore, that offering a better contract happens out of purely voluntary motivation.
Inevitably, the intention to resign also calls the employee's loyalty into question. The fact is: as a manager, you won't forget the situation. The planned resignation will always be somewhere in the back of your mind going forward, and more than one boss will catch themselves already mentally looking for a replacement from that point on. Can irreparable damage to the relationship of trust really be ruled out here?
The role of the executive search consultant
Counteroffers cannot be prevented. Our duty is to keep the likelihood of a candidate withdrawing as low as possible, in our client's interest. To do that, we need to accurately assess how the candidate would handle being presented with such an offer.
That is only possible with a very sound assessment of the true origin and nature of the motivation to change jobs. This can be of fundamental importance for the candidate too. How else could the question of their resolve in such a situation be answered honestly and reliably?
Such an analysis requires various qualities, such as patience and the ability to empathise. Only this builds the kind of trust between candidate and consultant that enables a conscientious assessment of the situation.
In our view, that must be the standard every executive search consultant holds themselves to.