The Counter-Offer Trap in M&E and FM

Counter-offers are everywhere at the moment, and if you've handed in your notice in M&E or FM in the last six months there's a strong chance you've had one thrown at you. Bigger basic, a bonus tweak, a new title, a promise of a clearer route to PM or Contract Manager, all dressed up to make you stay. The question worth sitting with is whether any of it actually fixes the reason you wanted to leave in the first place.

Why we're seeing so many

The hiring market is tight, and replacing someone in a niche role takes time and costs money. The path of least resistance for a stretched manager is to keep the person they've already got, and the easiest way to do that is to throw a number at them. Eight or nine grand on the basic feels cheap next to a six month search and a quiet desk in the meantime.

I'm not knocking employers for trying. If a key estimator or project manager walks in May, the gap that creates by August can be brutal, and you can understand the temptation to do whatever it takes to hold on to them. But there's a difference between fighting hard to keep someone for the right reasons and patching the problem with cash. The second one tends to come back round.

The bit candidates miss

A counter-offer rarely fixes what made someone start looking, because money is almost never the headline reason. Most of the people I speak to are looking because of management, workload, lack of progression, or a job that doesn't match what they were sold at interview, and none of that gets sorted by a pay rise. Six months on, the same problem is usually still there, and now they've burned a bit of trust by handing in their notice and then walking it back.

The industry numbers back it up. Most studies put the proportion of people who accept a counter-offer and then leave within twelve months somewhere between sixty and eighty percent, and from what I've seen in M&E and FM that feels about right. The ones who stick around tend to be in a different boat. Usually it's a proper role change or a real shift in responsibility, rather than just a few extra grand on the same job.

What it costs employers

There's a real cost to using counter-offers as a retention strategy. The team almost always notice, and the next person who wants a pay rise quickly works out the route. Morale takes a knock when people realise the way to get properly paid is to threaten to leave. It also tells the person you counter-offered that they hold the cards, and some of them will play that hand again twelve months down the line.

The better approach is the boring one. Pay people fairly before they start looking, have honest conversations about progression, and spot the warning signs early enough to do something about them. None of it is rocket science, it just takes time and attention that most managers don't have spare. Which is exactly why so many businesses end up in the counter-offer cycle in the first place.

If you're going to market for a replacement, it's worth checking your offer is actually where the market sits before you start. Our M&E and FM salary guide for 2026 covers where packages have moved over the last twelve months, and where the gaps tend to show up at offer stage.

If you've got one on the table

If you're a candidate sat with a counter-offer right now, the question is fairly simple. If you'd already mentally left before resigning, more money on the same role rarely changes the reasons you wanted out. It's worth taking a breath, writing down what was actually pushing you away, and asking whether the offer in front of you solves any of it. If the honest answer is no, it probably isn't the fix it looks like.

One more thing worth knowing. Once you've accepted a counter-offer, you're often the first name on the list when budgets get tight. Managers don't always say it out loud, but loyalty calculus does shift once they know you were willing to go. Worth factoring in before you sign anything.