Bidding wars | Employers turn to counteroffers to keep wantaway staff from leaving

Employers are turning to salary counter-offers to fend off competition from poaching their talent, new research has uncovered.

As part of efforts to keep key staff, 40% of UK employers have made a counteroffer in the past 12 months, according to the CIPD.

To tempt workers to stay, 38% of employers who made offers matched the salary of the new job offer and 40% offered even higher sums. Counteroffers are most prevalent in London (58% of London-based employers in the last 12 months), making it the ‘counteroffer capital’ of the UK.

These are the key findings of the latest Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD, a quarterly survey of 2,000 UK employers hiring, pay and redundancy intentions. It shows that employers continue to face pressure to pay higher wages to compete in the labour market. Employers expect basic pay increases to remain at 5% for the next 12 months, unchanged from the last two quarters, and counteroffers are regularly being made to keep key staff.