Recruitment company Robert Half reveals what bosses are offering to stop staff from leaving

Australian bosses are typically offering salary increases of 9 per cent to stop staff from leaving.

Recruitment company Robert Half surveyed 300 hiring managers in Australia and found the border closure was making employers go to desperate lengths to keep talent.

Most Australian workers are still missing out on decent pay increases, with wages in the year to March growing by just  1.5 per cent.

Highly-valued employees, however, can secure themselves a very healthy pay increase if their bosses really wanted to keep them and their skills.

Bosses were offering, on average, 9 per cent pay increases to stop staff from accepting a new job with a competitor, the Robert Half online research done in May found.

Nicole Gorton, a director at Robert Half, said counter offers to keep good staff were often better than an expensive recruitment process to find a replacement.

‘Counteroffers are more often a tool to help the employer,’ she said.

‘Particularly in a competitive market, it can be tempting to make counteroffers in order to retain institutional knowledge and avoid the resource intensive exercise of recruiting, onboarding, and training a new employee.’

Nonetheless, with professionals having the most choice of jobs in 12 years, counteroffers didn’t necessarily guarantee they would stay long term, even though 89 per cent of firms surveyed were intending to put them forward.

The Robert Half research found 52 per cent of staff offered a higher salary to stay left within a year anyway.

A fifth or 19 per cent of staff offered a salary enticement to stay left within six months anyway.

Robert Half said employees who accepted a counter offer were more likely to have their loyalty questioned and were likely to miss out on future salary increases.

‘If securing a pay-rise is your sole reason to resign, then a counteroffer may seem appealing,’ it said.

‘However it raises the question of why your employer was not willing to negotiate salary in your last review and suggests that you may struggle to secure and grow your remuneration on long-term basis.’

Counteroffers are also more likely to encourage other staff members to bargain for big pay increases. 

‘Using counteroffers as a negotiating tool can send a message of disloyalty which can tarnish employee trust – both within the team and amongst leadership,’ the report said.

‘Moreover, an employee who is motivated by salary alone may not develop or evolve their skills as quickly as one of who is pursuing career growth and new challenges.’

Last month, the number of advertised jobs in Australia rose by another 3 per cent to a 12-year high of 211,854 available positions, the ANZ job ads series showed.