When a high performer tells you they’re leaving the organization, what do you do?
Our reader poll today asks: When a high performer tells you they’re leaving the organization, what do you do?
- Make an increased/strong counteroffer to try to keep them 27.66%
- Make an equal counteroffer and leave it up to fate to decide 16.18%
- Make a weaker counteroffer and appeal to loyalty/familiarity 9.78%
- Make no counteroffer and just let them go 46.38%
Set them free? A surprising portion (46%) of you report that when a high-performer says they’re leaving your organization that no counteroffer is made to get them to stay. While that’s understandable from a “salary ransom situation” avoidance perspective, not even trying to keep them seems shortsighted. While you don’t want to encourage the behavior of people seeking new opportunities just to use it as leverage to get a raise, you also don’t want to simply let top-talent flee. First, it sends a message to those who stay that the company doesn’t really value high-performers. Second, the investment you’ve made in recruiting, training, and developing those high-performers just walked out the door and you now have to replace them, which will be costly. Consider the long-term and broader costs of losing a high-performer when deciding whether or not to make a counteroffer to keep them within your organization. The math might surprise you and prod you into making a counteroffer to keep that talented individual around.
– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.
Wow! I’m surprised at the results of the poll. I would have expected the higher counteroffer to be the winner, or maybe I’m the biggest sucker in the room. This is always a hard decision, and I’ve lost sleep over this one many times. I can’t imagine the weaker or equal counteroffer ever working unless that isn’t the cause of them leaving. I would say about half the higher counteroffers work and half do not, in my experience.
Thanks for the thoughts Polly. I think equal compensation/title counteroffers can work because then the person doesn’t have the switching costs and uncertainty associated with joining a new company. There’s always risk of making a move versus staying where you’re comfortable and understand the dynamics. I think these switching costs can also be factored into making a lower compensation offer but also highlighting they don’t have switching costs. And for clarity – the responses to the poll are only about the action taken to TRY to keep the person on board. The results do NOT reflect how successful those approaches are.
In my experience, counter offers are too late in most situations. The individual has emotionally already moved on from the organization and leaderships have already missed the signals of an unhappy person. The last 12 months have challenged so many organizations to be competitive from a salary and work location perspective that some of this is out of the manager/ leaders’ control. I’ve learned the hard way, that for those instances that you can’t control due to organization constraints, wishing the person well, staying in touch and congratulating them on their journey is the best path.