The Counter Offer Conversation, and the Questions Worth Asking First

Kate Wheeler
13 hours ago
4 min read

A counter offer arrives at the worst possible moment. You have already made the decision, already had the difficult conversation, and then your manager asks for a day to see what they can do. This is one of the most common things theatre nurses ring me about, and it is worth thinking through calmly rather than in the corridor between cases.

I am not going to tell you never to accept one. Sometimes a counter offer is the right answer. But it deserves the same scrutiny you would give any other offer, and most people give it far less.

Start with why you were leaving

Write down, honestly, the three things that made you look elsewhere. Not the polite version you gave in the resignation meeting. The real ones.

Then read the counter offer against that list. If the reasons were the roster, the drive, the way escalation is handled, the fact you have not been released for study leave in two years, or a relationship with one particular colleague, ask yourself which of those the money actually fixes.

In my experience the pay figure is rarely the thing that made someone open a job advert at eleven at night. It is usually the thing that made it easier to justify.

Ask what changed, and why it took a resignation

This is the question most people are too polite to ask, and it is the most useful one.

If the money was available, why was it not offered at your last review? If the roster can flex, why could it not flex in March? There may be a good answer. A budget cycle may genuinely have turned over. A senior departure may have freed something up. But if the honest answer is that nobody looked at it until you handed in a letter, that tells you how the next two years are likely to go.

Separate the pay from the conditions

A counter offer is usually presented as one number. Break it apart.

What is the base change, what is the allowance, what is guaranteed and what is discretionary? Is it written down? Does it survive a change of manager? Is anything attached to it, such as picking up a particular list or covering a gap that is about to appear?

Pay is only one part of the picture, and often the least flexible part. As we have written before, your pay may be fixed but your conditions are not. Study leave, roster stability, professional development, scope and rotation are frequently more negotiable than the rate, and they affect your week far more.

The same discipline applies to the offer you were about to accept. Reading both properly, side by side, is the only fair comparison. Our piece on how to read a job offer properly sets out what to look for.

Think about what you have already said

When you resigned, you told your employer you were prepared to leave. That is now known, and it does not unsay itself.

Some departments handle this well and it makes no difference at all. Others do not. It is worth being realistic about which kind you work in, because you will be the one living with it. This is not a reason to refuse a counter offer. It is a reason to think about whether the working relationship you are staying for is the one you will actually have.

Think about the other side too

If you accept the counter offer, you are withdrawing from a role that someone has interviewed you for, planned around and probably turned other candidates down for. That is not a moral failing, and it happens. But it is worth deciding early rather than late, and telling them directly rather than going quiet. Perioperative nursing in Australia and New Zealand is a small world, and how you handle it is remembered longer than the decision itself.

When accepting is the right call

There are good reasons to stay. If the thing that was blocking you has genuinely moved, if the role you wanted has opened up, if a difficult colleague has left, if the training pathway is now funded and in writing, then the counter offer is not a patch. It is the conversation you should have had earlier, arriving late.

What I would avoid is staying because leaving feels disloyal. Long service is valuable, but loyalty to one hospital can quietly limit a theatre nursing career if it becomes the only reason you are still there. If you are not sure which it is, our piece on how to know if your current theatre is holding you back is a reasonable place to start.

A practical suggestion

Ask for the counter offer in writing, and ask for forty eight hours. Any employer worth staying for will give you both. If either request causes a problem, you have learned something useful.

And if you would rather talk it through with someone who is not on either side of the table, that is a conversation I am happy to have. It costs you nothing and it is confidential.

Current perioperative vacancies across Australia and New Zealand are on our theatre nursing jobs page.