Accepting a counter offer can be the right decision, but only when it fixes the reason you started looking. When you hand in your notice and your employer suddenly finds an extra £5,000, a promotion or the flexibility you asked for last year, the useful question is whether anything that made you want to leave has genuinely changed. Here is how to test that before you reply.
Should I accept a counter offer from my current employer?
Accept it only if it fixes the reason you started looking, not just the number on your payslip. A counter offer is worth taking when it removes the cause of your frustration. It is worth declining when it simply makes that frustration better paid.
Most people who resign have been thinking about it for months. Pay may have started the search, but the cause is often a role that stopped growing, a manager who rarely backs you or a working pattern that no longer fits your life. A counter offer arrives within a day or two, so it usually addresses whatever is quickest to change, which is money.
Before you reply, write down the three reasons you first began looking. Then mark each one that the offer deals with in writing. If most are covered, staying can be a sound choice. If the offer covers one out of three, you are being asked to accept the other two as they are.
Why did my employer wait until I resigned to offer more?
Often because a resignation forces a decision that an ordinary conversation did not. Your employer may not have known how unhappy you were, may only have won budget approval once the cost of replacing you was clear, or may have assumed you would stay without it. Each explanation tells you something different.
Take a plain example. You earn £34,000 and your employer finds £5,000 to keep you. That is a rise of nearly 15%, and it was clearly affordable the day before you resigned. Ask what has changed, apart from your notice.
If your manager genuinely did not know and moved quickly to put it right, that is a fair reason, and the speed of the response counts in their favour. If the money was always available and only appeared when you threatened to leave, the offer is the price of avoiding the cost of replacing you, not recognition of your work. You can simply ask why now. The answer, and how comfortable they are giving it, is useful information. Employers have their own reasons for acting late, which we covered in our earlier post on why more employees are saying no to counter offers.
How do I know whether a counter offer has really changed anything?
Test it against four things: your original reasons for leaving, your career progression, the culture of your team and how far you trust what you are being told. An offer that moves the reason you started looking, plus at least one other, deserves serious thought.
Start with your original list. A pay rise cures a pay problem and nothing else. If you left because of your manager or your workload, ask what is different about either of those on Monday morning.
On progression, a promotion should arrive with a new title, a wider scope and a date. A promise to revisit the question at your next review is not a promotion. If your path forward is your main concern, our guide on how to create a clear path to your next promotion shows what to ask for.
On culture, flexibility offered after you resign raises two questions. Does it apply to the whole team, or only to people who threaten to leave? And will it outlast the manager who agreed to it?
Can I trust the promises in a counter offer?
Trust what is written down and treat what is only said with caution. A pay rise that shows in your next payslip is firm. A promise of a promotion in six months, a better manager or more flexibility once things settle is only as reliable as the person who made it, and that person may move on or change their mind.
Ask for every commitment in writing, with a date attached. Then notice how your employer responds. A quick, confident yes is a good sign. Hesitation or irritation tells you how much weight the promise carries.
Trust also runs the other way. Be honest with yourself about whether you can return to the same desk, the same meetings and the same colleagues without resenting how long it took anyone to value you. If you cannot, the money will not carry you for long.
What should I say when my employer makes a counter offer?
Thank them, ask for time and do not give an answer on the spot. A counter offer is easy to accept in the moment and hard to unpick afterwards, so a day to think is a reasonable request and costs you nothing.
Use that time to compare the offer with the new role on more than salary: the job itself, your future manager, the route forward and the working pattern. Talk it through with your recruitment consultant before you reply. They will have heard these situations many times and can help you weigh both options against what you said you wanted. None of this replaces a read of your own contract, so check your notice terms before you decide.
If you stay, ask for the terms in writing before you withdraw your notice, and tell the new employer promptly and politely. If you go, thank your current employer and mean it. You may well work with them again.
If you have an offer on the table, from a new employer or your current one, our recruitment consultants are happy to talk it through with you in confidence. We can tell you what the market looks like for your role, so you can decide on the facts.