Has your boss ever matched a salary form another a job you were offered in order to keep you? Did you stay? If so for how long?

Tweet

My experience over 35 years of business, is that when employees get another job offer with a higher salary and their existing employer offers to match the salary and they accept and stay, rarely do they end up staying over 12 months. I am not sure why that is and can only guess it might be due to a number of factors. Often the employer is desperate to retain the employee but hurt that the employee has looked outside. Maybe the employer feels he has given the employee benefits over and above the salary of the employee that he has not appreciated, or maybe the employer has born the costs of training the employee and feels the employee has taken advantage of the employer by using his firm to “cut his teeth”, gain experience and move on. What ever the reason it often fractures the relationship. Other times I imagine the employee feels they have been taken advantage of by discovering they were worth more on the market and had they not applied elsewhere the employer was happy to leave them on the old salary. I use to believe it was often not about salary in the first instance, the decision to look outside the firm usually starts with a reason that is not salary related. What has been your experience?