Trust: Accepting a counteroffer can damage the trust and relationship with your current employer. By expressing your intention to leave and then accepting a counteroffer, your company may question your loyalty and wonder if this could happen again.  This can impact future opportunities, promotions, and the level of trust from your colleagues.  

 

Long-term career prospects: While counteroffers provide a short-term solution, statistically they rarely work out long-term.  The underlying reasons that prompted a decision to leave in the first place may not be fully addressed. This can result in you staying in a role that remains disappointing in certain ways and missing out on a new opportunity.  

 

Job security: After expressing an intention to leave, your employer may see you as a flight risk in the future or actively start searching for your replacement. This can lead to a strained working relationship and increased scrutiny of your performance.

 

Cultural fit and job satisfaction: A counteroffer usually doesn’t address deeper issues that caused you to explore a new position in the first place. Factors such as work environment, company culture, lack of growth opportunities, or job satisfaction are not easily fixed with a counteroffer. Accepting a counteroffer will likely just delay your decision to leave. 

 

Market perception: Accepting a counteroffer can impact your reputation in the job market. The people who invested time in meeting you and considering you may not appreciate how this impacts them, especially if it’s late in the game.  This could potentially affect your chances of securing new opportunities down the line.