The internet has been lit up this week with a clever campaign that went viral, featuring a ‘girl next door’ who dramatically and stylishly quits her job by taking 33 photos of herself with a hand held white board, each picture with a different message on the white board. She then emailed this message to everyone in her office so that they all saw it at the same time on a Monday morning.
It was a very unique (funny/stylish/original) way to quit and one which caught the imagination of people everywhere, until The Chive revealed it was a hoax and purely done for fun.
You can read the original email and see the photos in full on The Chive website.
This hoax was so popular in fact that 238,000 people shared it on Facebook and 31,000 tweeted it. It did however trigger talk around water coolers and on blogs, of ways that people would quit and if employees are actually happy in their jobs.
At ROD the conversation that we had revolved around ‘If people do quit, why is it important that they stick to their guns and don’t then accept a counter offer?’ We feel strongly that accepting a counter offer from your current employer when you hand in your resignation can be one of the biggest mistakes you’ll make in your career.
So if you are thinking of handing in your notice and beginning in a new role, here’s our list of seven reasons why you should not accept a counter offer after handing in your notice.
1) If you have been offered a new title and lovely promotion / pay rise – why do you think it took a resignation to surface it? Is this promotion or pay rise based on merit? Or is it purely because you put a gun to their head and they panicked?
2) Your Manager will have to replace you if you leave and this is very time consuming and costly for them. Would you agree that it is easier for them to offer you more money and / or a new title than it is to replace you?
3) If you were to accept the counter offer, how do you think your boss will view your loyalty? They may well say it’s forgotten about but we guarantee that every future sick day or dentist visit will be viewed with suspicion.
4) How much respect do you think they will have for you if you stay? They will feel that they have pulled the wool over your eyes and that they are in control of your career and not you.
5) The majority of people resign for reasons other than money, although when extra money is dangled in front of them they feel compelled to stay. In most cases the real reason for wanting to leave will re-appear in the very near future when the novelty of a little extra money has worn off.
6) Why should a company keep someone who didn’t really deserve a promotion and instead received it in reaction to a fear of departure? When the market dips, as it inevitably does, you will be at the top of the list of people asked to go.
7) Think about the other company (or companies) that have offered you other opportunities. What will they think of someone who used them to get a pay rise at their current company? Individual industries can be very incestuous and you don’t want to be thought of as someone who plays companies off against each other.
If your main motivator for looking around is more money then before you go out on interviews and start receiving offers – walk into your bosses office right now and ask him for a pay rise. If he says no then you know that any offer at resignation stage is an act of desperation, but if he says yes then you have just saved yourself alot of time and effort!
So we hope this helps, but we wouldn’t recommend quitting using photos and a white-board to hand in your notice. A simple polite conversation and written notice will suffice.