In the latest installment of her regular series, “From the Frontline”, our columnist discusses how the employment market is focused on retention, rather than retrenchment. A former banker, who now works as a headhunter, the author has more than 10 years’ experience at leading firms in Asia.

If those recent redundancy sprees made you think that all employees were a dime a dozen, think again. Welcome to the quasi-new world of counter-offers and retention packages: the banks’ self-justified and self-righteous reaction to being left understaffed by their own retrenchments.

International banks in Asia are designing attractive packages to retain talent, especially in their higher echelons, in order to ward off any temptations that their most-prized employees might encounter.

Organisations like Citigroup, and the others that have historically always been champions of counter-offers, are now taking them to a whole new level. If you’ve ever worked through the long process of helping in a country-level hire, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

You get the offer rolled out, only to face a counter one, which might be 20 to 30 per cent higher than your generous poaching proposal. And we’re not taking just about a pragmatic raise in basic pay. Potential extra goodies include: guaranteed bonuses (yes, even now!); stock options; additional allowances; and (for the real high flyers) increased team headcount.

A candidate’s commitment can obviously be questioned if he/she takes a counter offer but, given the still-precarious market conditions, can we really blame anyone for thinking that a known devil is better than an unknown one?

Not every firm is going counter crazy. In contrast to their foreign competitors, the three big Singaporean banks are much more laid back about losing talent. This is probably because, apart from the big DBS cull last year, their retrenchment hasn’t been as aggressive, so their headcount is large enough that they don’t mind losing a few staff. The global firms have cut back so much that every position is critical.

No counter, no career?

If your current bank doesn’t attempt a generous counter offer, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re seen as sub-par staff member. When I look at the type of person being retained in the current market, I see that banks’ decisions are more strategic than personal, and curiously more about perception rather than performance.

If the perception is that letting go of a particular person will lead to more defections within his/her team, then even a slightly better-than-average performer might be at the receiving end of an employer’s courtship.

However, be aware that these are dangerous waters. Retention packages are reactive and rarely proactive. In the appreciative warmth of a counter-offer, even if candidates momentarily forget the reason they wanted to leave, they shouldn’t forget that banks use retention as a hedging manoeuvre. It’s designed to stall a perceived fear which, depending on the conditions, will sooner or later get dissipated.

Moreover, it leaves a bitter after taste on both sides. The prospective organisation has wasted time and effort, and must start the search anew. Some more aggressive banks might even go so far as to blacklist candidates.

In the aftermath of retention, the current organisation is left with undoubtedly a valuable (albeit now an expensive) employee. But it can’t help thinking sheepishly that it was somehow arm-twisted into it. This in turn raises the stakes for the employee by raising the visibility of his or her role/performance. If retrenchment was really tough, retention in some ways is tougher.

Would you like to become an anonymous columnist on eFinancialCareers and write about your plight as a bank employee or job seeker in Singapore or Hong Kong? Email apac.editor@efinancialcareers.com