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Should You Match a Counter-Offer?
Previously on Behind HR Lines
Kelly spent the last four weeks cleaning up messes she didn’t create.
An RTO mandate detonated without warning.
Calibration turned into a political standoff.
A retaliation complaint forced HR into slow, careful truth-seeking.
A layoff rumor nearly made it to TechCrunch.
And just as the dust settled, Nikolai, their lead ML Engineer, resigned, then stayed, exposing how fragile retention really is.
By Friday evening, another line was crossed.
A Sales manager matched a counteroffer. Twenty percent. No approval. No conversation.
Episode 6 is a look at one of the most controversial topics in the HR world - should you retain people who have resigned by matching their counteroffers?
If you’re new here, welcome. Behind HR Lines is a dramatized composite of the messy, political, emotionally loaded reality of running the People function, told through the eyes of Kelly Cross, Chief People Officer at LumaCore Labs.
The Situation
Friday, 6:42 p.m.
Kelly was packing up slower than usual, rereading an email she’d already answered, when Maya appeared at the door. She didn’t knock. She rarely did when things were bad.
“Quick heads-up,” Maya said. “A sales manager just matched a counteroffer.”
Kelly looked up. “Matched?”
“Yep, twenty percent. Promised him verbally without any approvals and looped in Finance later.”
Kelly sat back in her chair. “Who?”
Maya named him. Strong performer. Loud internally. The kind of person people described as important to momentum.
“And the resignation?” Kelly asked.
“Withdrawn,” Maya said. “As of an hour ago.”
Kelly closed her laptop. “So by Monday, half the floor will know this.”
Maya nodded. “By lunch.”
“If this sticks, we just taught the entire company how to get a raise.”
The Pattern Forms
By Saturday afternoon, it had already spread.In private messages. In half-serious jokes.
Kelly spent Saturday morning answering messages she hadn’t been sent directly.
A RevOps manager asking whether counteroffers were “back on the table.”
Someone in Product asking if retention exceptions were now manager discretion.
A finance partner asking, carefully, how many more of these they should expect.
Kelly kept rereading the Sales manager’s email. “He was going to leave anyway. Would you rather lose him?”
Every justification sounded reasonable in isolation. Together, they formed something else entirely. By Sunday evening, Kelly drafted a note she didn’t send.
Counteroffers don’t retain talent. They retain resentment.
She saved it in Drafts and slept poorly.
The Pivot
Monday, 8:30 a.m.
Daniel was already seated when Kelly walked in. That alone told her this wasn’t going to be casual. Parker joined from his desk. Lena dialed in. Jessica arrived last, coffee in hand, expression neutral.
Daniel got straight to it. “Sales did what they had to do.”
Kelly didn’t answer immediately.
“They retained a top performer,” he continued. “That’s the outcome we want.”
“For now,” Kelly said. “But the mechanism matters.”
Jessica raised an eyebrow. “Are we really dissecting a save?”
Kelly turned to her. “We’re dissecting what happens next.”
Lena jumped in before it escalated. “Finance approved it because the alternative was immediate attrition. But we can’t repeat this.”
Daniel leaned back. “So what’s the plan? Let people walk?”
Kelly shook her head. “I’m saying we decide together. Not in hallways. Not under pressure. Not after someone resigns and hands us a deadline.”
Parker spoke quietly. “Engineering will be next. People talk.”
Kelly nodded. “They are already talking.”
She didn’t pull up a deck. She didn’t need to.
“When a counteroffer happens like this,” she said, “it tells everyone something. Not intentionally. But clearly.”
Daniel frowned. “And that is?”
“That leaving gets rewarded,” Kelly said. “That silence pays better than honesty. That if you wait long enough, someone will blink.”
The room was quiet.
Jessica exhaled. “So what, we ban counteroffers?”
“No,” Kelly said. “We stop pretending they’re acts of heroism. If we counter, it’s deliberate. With context. With fixes. And with leadership owning it.”
Daniel looked at her. “And if we don’t?”
“Then we let them go,” Kelly said. “Cleanly. Without rewriting the story after.”
What Went Out
The guidance didn’t look dramatic. That was intentional.
No manager-level counteroffers.
All retention decisions to be first reviewed with HR, Finance, and the functional lead.
Any counter required role clarity, manager follow-up, and documented commitments.
No long explanation. No motivational framing. Just clear boundaries.
Slack reacted exactly the way Kelly expected.
A few angry messages she never replied to.
A couple of quiet thank-yous from managers who had been losing people to noise.
One senior leader asking whether this applied to them.
“Yes,” she replied. “It applies to everybody, including you.”
The Reaction
Maya stopped by at the end of the day. “Sales isn’t happy,” she said.
Kelly smiled faintly. “They weren’t happy last week either. What about the employee?”
“He stayed,” Maya said. “But his manager has to come up with a new expanded role by next week. Their quota will increase for sure.”
Kelly closed her notebook. “Good.”
She paused. “If this works, we won’t hear about it.”
Maya nodded. “And if it doesn’t?”
Kelly stood. “We’ll hear everything.”
The Pattern
Counteroffers feel urgent because the employee seems to have the organization cornered.
Matching a counter-offer is a delicate balance. Things to check before taking a call:
- Is the person paid in line with the market?
- Is the person paid in line with internal salary bands?
- Can the person have an expanded role to match the counter offer?
- Would we actually retain the person from a long term perspective?
- Was this done in line with the counter-offer policies the organization has?
Kelly Recommends
To answer questions about pay bands, internal parity, external parity, and more, HR leaders suggested two compensation tools that are integrated with benchmark data:
- Comprehensive
- Pave
Dear Kelly: You’ve vented to a friend. You’ve laughed with your team. Now tell Kelly. Dear Kelly is collecting the real-world HR stories that deserve to be told - the messy, painfully familiar ones. Drop yours here. Your story might even inspire the next edition.
Just When Things Were Settling Down…
Thursday, 6:11 pm - Kelly was closing her laptop when an email came in.
From: Daniel Mercury
Subject: Prep for Tomorrow
Inside was a deck she hadn’t seen before.
On slide twelve that highlighted Talent Risks, a comment from a board member sat in the margin.
“Why are we hearing about this now?”
Kelly didn’t need more context. This wasn’t about the data in the deck. It was about why the board was seeing it for the first time tonight. And she again got the sense that she was about to be dragged into something which she did not create in the first place.
Her phone buzzed.
Daniel: Can you walk me through this before tomorrow?
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