A pattern keeps repeating itself. A qualified accountant in a mid-tier or regional practice gets an offer from industry, or from a Big Four firm, or sometimes from a competitor down the road. They bring it to their partner. The partner, not wanting to lose them, matches the salary. The accountant stays. Six months later, they leave anyway.
The salary was never really the issue.
This is one of the most consistent things I hear when I speak to candidates who have recently moved. When I ask what prompted the move, money comes up, but it rarely comes up first. What comes up first is something harder to put a number on: feeling stuck, carrying a client portfolio that no longer challenges them, watching a progression route that seems to exist in theory but never quite materialises in practice. The salary offer from outside was not the reason they left. It was the permission.
So when a firm responds to that with a counteroffer that changes only the number on the payslip, they have addressed the symptom and left the cause completely untouched.
What people are actually asking for when they hand in their notice
In 2026, the supply of practice-trained talent in Ireland is genuinely tight. ACA, ACCA, and CPA-qualified professionals who have done two to four years post-qualification in practice are in real demand, both from industry and from competing firms. When someone in that cohort decides it is time to move, they have usually been thinking about it for a while. The resignation is rarely impulsive.
What most of them are actually asking, even if they do not use these words, is: can something here change? Can I do different work? Can I see a clearer path? Can I stop doing the same client work I was doing two years ago?
Some firms hear that and think: right, let us show them what progression looks like here. Others hear it and reach for a salary figure. The second response is faster and feels decisive, but it tends to just delay the conversation by a few months.
The creative part that most firms skip
Retention, when done well, is a leadership challenge. It asks partners and managers to actually think about what a person needs to grow, and whether the firm can provide it.
That might mean restructuring a client portfolio. A manager who has been doing predominantly compliance work for smaller clients might be ready for more complex assignments, or for exposure to a different sector. Moving them onto a more demanding set of clients is not a gift, exactly, it is an investment in both directions.
It might mean adjusting hours or working patterns in a way that reflects where someone is in their life, without framing it as a concession. A senior accountant who has recently had a child, or who is managing a significant personal commitment, may value a genuine conversation about flexibility more than anything else on offer.
It might mean being honest about a timeline. “You will be considered for manager in the next promotion round” lands very differently when it is backed by a specific conversation about what that actually requires, and when the partner says it with intent rather than as a holding statement.
None of this is complicated in principle. In practice, it requires partners to have conversations they are sometimes not entirely comfortable having, particularly around progression, because it involves making commitments that feel harder to manage than a salary adjustment.
What this does not mean
It does not mean that money is irrelevant. If someone is being paid materially below market rate, that needs to be addressed, and pretending otherwise is its own form of poor retention strategy. The salary data from 2025 surveys across the Irish market showed continued upward pressure on practice salaries, particularly at manager and senior levels, and that pressure has not eased in 2026. Pay matters.
But pay in isolation, offered reactively at the moment of resignation, rarely works. Research on counteroffers consistently shows that the majority of people who accept one leave within twelve months regardless. The relationship has changed. They know the firm only reacted when pushed.
The question worth asking before someone gets to that point
The real opportunity here is not in how you respond to a resignation. It is in what you notice before one arrives.
If you manage a team in practice, it is worth asking yourself: do you know what the people on your team actually want from the next two years? Not in a general sense, but specifically. Do you know which of them feel stretched and which feel underused? Do you know who is quietly thinking about industry and what, if anything, would change that calculation?
Most people will tell you, if you ask genuinely and they trust that you are listening.
The firms that retain people well are not necessarily the ones paying the most. They are the ones where partners have built enough of a relationship with their team to have that conversation before it becomes a crisis. That is harder to replicate than a salary increase. It is also considerably more durable.
