The "one more year" plan: what delayed career moves are really costing you

"I'll leave after I get my bonus."

"Once the restructure settles down."

"When the kids are a bit older."

"After I've been here for two years. It will look better on my resume."

Does this sound familiar? If you're a senior HR leader who has been telling yourself a version of this, you are not alone. I hear it constantly and I totally get it. The logic feels sound. You're not avoiding change; you're just trying to time it perfectly.

But that careful timing is actually costing you.

Now is the time to make a move

In Hong Kong and Singapore, the end of Q1 is one of the most active hiring periods of the year. Bonuses have been paid. Budgets have been approved. Companies that held back on headcount in Q4 are now ready to move. And HR leaders who have been quietly unhappy (or quietly watching the market) start to act.

This is your window. If you've been telling yourself "one more year," this is a good moment to ask whether that's the right strategy.

The moving goalposts

The "one more year" plan has a design flaw: the goalposts always move. Your bonus arrives and suddenly there's a new project you'd feel guilty leaving mid-stream. The restructure settles but now there's talk of a promotion. The kids get older, but your aging parents need your help.

Each milestone feels like a reasonable reason to wait. But strung together, they become years. And years, at a senior level, are expensive.

The real math

Let's make this concrete. Assume you're a senior HR leader earning USD 230,000 base salary. Based on my work with clients at this level, a strategic, well-executed move to the right role can conservatively deliver a 15% salary uplift. That's an additional USD 34,500 per year in base salary alone.

Now let's add your bonus. Let’s use a reasonable range of 2-3 months of base salary. Your total annual bonus sits between USD 38,333 and USD 57,500. A 15% uplift on that brings an additional USD 5,750 to USD 8,625 per year in bonus.

Combined, every year you delay a strategic move costs you somewhere between USD 40,250 and USD 43,125 in direct compensation.

Wait two years? You're looking at USD 80,500 to USD 86,250 left on the table.

And that's before you factor in that your new, higher base becomes the floor for every future raise, every future bonus calculation, and every future offer. The compounding effect of starting from a higher number is important, even if we can’t quantify in this example.

The formula

If you want to run your own numbers:

Annual cost of waiting = (Current base salary x 0.15) + (Monthly salary x months of bonus x 0.15)

For example:

• Current base: USD 230,000

• Uplift on base: USD 230,000 x 0.15 = USD 34,500

• Monthly salary: USD 230,000 ÷ 12 = USD 19,167

• Bonus at 2.5 months: USD 19,167 x 2.5 = USD 47,917

• Uplift on bonus: USD 47,917 x 0.15 = USD 7,188

• Total annual cost of waiting: USD 41,688

• Two-year cost of waiting: USD 83,375

  
  

Plug in your own salary and bonus to get your number. Most of my clients are genuinely surprised by the result.

Why you will wait anyway

The math is simple. So why do so many capable HR leaders keep extending their timeline?

Because the cost of waiting is invisible. It doesn't show up on your payslip. Nobody sends you a bill at the end of the year saying "you left USD 41,688 on the table this year." The money you didn't earn is money you never had—so it doesn't feel like a loss, even though it is one.

Meanwhile, the risks of moving feel very visible: a tough market, a potentially difficult new boss, the possibility of getting it wrong.

This is a well-documented psychological pattern called loss aversion. We feel the pain of a potential loss more acutely than the pleasure of an equivalent gain. For senior HR leaders, this tendency is often amplified by high security values and risk-aversion under stress—patterns that show up consistently in Hogan assessment data for this population.

The milestones you're waiting for aren't irrational. But they are functioning as permission slips—a way to feel responsible about a decision you've already made, while deferring the discomfort of actually making it.

The Q2 opportunity

Right now, the market around you is moving. Roles are being posted. Conversations are being had. Decisions are being made by companies looking to hire, and by HR leaders who decided that this year, they weren't going to wait.

You don't have to be ready. You just have to be willing to start.

The leaders who move during this window have one thing in common. They stopped waiting for certainty and started building momentum. They reached out to their network. They updated their LinkedIn profile. They had one conversation. And that one conversation led to the next.

If you've been holding off, now is the time. As Q2 kicks off next month, the market is warm and hiring managers are active.

What to do right now

Set a real deadline, not a milestone. Milestones move but dates don't. Say something like, "I will have made a move, or be actively in process, by [specific date]." Write it down and tell someone who will hold you accountable.

Run your own numbers by using the formula above. Seeing your specific cost of waiting in black and white tends to shift the internal conversation from "I'm being cautious" to "I'm making a financial choice."

Start building while you're still employed. The best moves are made from a position of strength. Every month you spend in your current role is a month you could be building your external presence, reconnecting with your network, and getting clear on what you actually want next.

If you'd like to work through what a strategic move could look like for you, book a confidential call via the link in my profile.

I work with female senior leaders in Human Resources who feel stuck to help them love their work or find work they love. I write about:

👂 Executive & career coaching

📄 Career development and career transition

🎯 Job search strategy

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