This is the second blog in our Bite-Sized But Impactful Data series. We collect a lot of powerful data at YMCA WorkWell and we believe that data is only meaningful if it's shared. While we publish our deep-dive Workplace Well-Being Report every year, this blog series shares one bite-sized and data-driven story each month. We want these stories to be short, quick reads that pique your interest more than answer all of your questions, so if you would ever like to go deeper and learn more about what we are seeing in our data, please contact us. We're always open to talk data with anyone and everyone.
Let's talk about the honeymoon effect.
Think back to the last time you started something new—a relationship, a workout routine, a hobby. Things start fresh and exciting, with a world of potential ahead of you. But as time goes on, the novelty wears off, the challenges start to outpace the excitement, and that "cool new thing" starts to lose some of its shine. That’s the honeymoon effect in action.
And it happens at work too. Actually, in over a decade of collecting employee well-being data, this honeymoon hangover has been one of the most reliable trends I have seen.
Organizations roll out the red carpet for new hires and take onboarding very seriously. You get the company t-shirt, the welcome package, and the new tech. You get structured training, clear guidance, new projects to keep you engaged, and valuable 1:1 time with a leader putting on their best face and introductions to your new teammates who are doing the same.
And guess what... it works! First-year employees consistently rank among the happiest in our data - they feel engaged, motivated, and optimistic about their future with their new company.
But that glow starts to fade and the cracks in the foundation start to appear. Excitement gives way to routine, leaders redirect their focus to other challenges, inefficiencies and obstacles start to rear their ugly head, and as the initial appreciation wanes, new employees begin to shoulder more and more responsibilities.
It's always left me wondering: We're able to devote so much energy to the experience of our new hires, so why do we fall short in appreciating and supporting the tenured employees already on our teams? To better understand this honeymoon hangover, let's look at data we collected from over 11,000 employees across Canada.
Figure 1 illustrates the significant honeymoon-hangover effect in Predicted Satisfaction - a question on our WorkWell Insights Survey that measures the degree to which employees believe that they will be satisfied with their job in three months. To help ground you in the data, we score our questions on a 100-point scale and consider any score of 77 or higher as a "Healthy" score.
In the first year at a new job, 68% - over two thirds - of employees report healthy Predicted Satisfaction scores, believing that they will be satisfied with their role in three months. This is significantly higher than our benchmark scores of 57% across all employees.
Just one year later, however, only half of employees report healthy Predicted Satisfaction scores. This significant decline doesn't rightsize itself until the 10-year mark. This honeymoon hangover effect exists for leaders, front-line staff, men, women, equity-deserving employees - you name it. Time and time again, it is one of the most reliable effects we see.
What are the reasons behind the dip? Let's start with one of the clearest reasons we see in our data: a dip in Recognition.
In the first year of employment, 67% of employees report a healthy Recognition score - that is 2 out of every 3 employees. You can see that honeymoon effect in action and the impact of healthy onboarding experiences and attention. By the one-year mark, however, the number of employees reporting healthy Recognition scores drops significantly to 50% and continues to drop until finally bouncing back around the 10-year mark.
Think about that within your own organization. Our data would suggest that less than half of your tenured employees believe they are appropriately recognized for the work that they do. If you are a leader looking to develop strategic action plans based on this data, this would be the group that requires the greatest support.
We see similar effects with Burnout.
Figure 3 illustrates how Burnout scores are relatively healthy among first year employees (15% reporting burnout "often" or "extremely often" - well below the community average of 25%), before nearly doubling by the one-year mark. We have all experienced the "scope creep" that is at play here - organizations are careful not to overload new employees with responsibilities, but over time, they are handed more and more until their workload becomes unmanageable. At that point, it's incredibly difficult to pull it back.
If you were to look at that burnout data and create an action plan to support the well-being of only one group, where would you start? It would almost certainly not be your new employees.
Before I continue, I think it's worth mentioning: A strong onboarding experience is undoubtedly very important for building a healthy organizational culture. Organizations rightly invest so much in this critical period of an employee's tenure because it sets the foundation for employees' long-term success, engagement, and retention. First impressions matter.
Keeping your long-term employees healthy and engaged, however, is also critical to the success of any organization. Investing in their experience helps maintain valuable institutional knowledge, strengthen leadership pipelines, increase productivity, and lower turnover costs. The data, however, would suggest that organizations often fall short in doing this.
The critical takeaway here is not that organizations over-invest in new employees, it's that they under-invest in tenured employees. So where can you start if you want to keep your employees healthy and engaged beyond year one? Here are some places to start:
The honeymoon phase might be inevitable, but the honeymoon hangover doesn't have to be. If you care about the long-term success of your organization, you should be just as committed to supporting and engaging your tenured employees as you are your new ones. After all, it's the people who stay that shape your company's future.
If you'd like to read more about how we report on valuable tenure data in our WorkWell Insights Reports or the coaching services we offer to new and tenured leaders alike - please feel free to reach out to me at dave.whiteside@ytr.ymca.ca any time. We've always got your back!