Analysts have identified a "three-year crisis" among company employees

The attitude of employees towards the employer changes as the length of service increases and most often experiences a crisis in the third or fifth year of work. This was told to Izvestia on February 14 by analysts at Happy Job.

According to the analysis of responses from more than 918,000 employees from 200 companies in different industries, employees with up to one year of experience demonstrate the highest level of loyalty. In this group, 52.6% of respondents said they were not thinking about changing jobs. This is the so-called honeymoon period: employees are engaged, motivated and committed to development within the company.

Further, loyalty is noticeably reduced. Among employees with one to three years of experience, the proportion of those who do not think about leaving is already 44.8%. The minimum value is fixed in the group with experience from three to five years — 41.8%. It is at this stage that the attitude towards the employer goes through the most difficult period: novelty disappears, expectations become more realistic, and career changes do not always occur. In addition, employers are paying less attention to such employees, as they switch it to newcomers.

According to the study, after overcoming this milestone, the dynamics change. In the group of employees with more than five years of experience, the proportion of those who do not think about changing jobs is growing again — up to 45%. This is due to the fact that some of the employees who have lost interest have already moved to a new location, while those who either went through the "crisis of three years" and made a conscious decision to stay, or were initially satisfied with their role and capabilities within the organization, remain in the company. The habit factor also works, especially for employees of older generations.

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"Our research confirms the decline in the average level of employee loyalty to their employer over a period of three to five years from year to year, and companies should treat this as a predictable management risk. It is during this period that it is very easy to lose valuable specialists who know processes well and have achieved high productivity, but have lost motivation, and their replacement costs the company an average of five employee salaries, not counting the cost of recruiting and adapting a new person," said Alexey Klochkov, founder and CEO of Happy Job.

According to Klochkov, it is worthwhile to prepare for the "crisis of three years" of an employee in advance, for example, by organizing HR processes so that during this period a person feels loved by the company.

On February 11, Anastasia Gorelkina, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors of JSC HC Siberian Business Union, member of the Board of Directors of JSC Azot, said that the main trend in the labor market in 2026 is companies investing in the training and retraining of their employees. According to the expert, the demand for a completely new type of specialists is currently growing. Thus, the production sites launched over the past year, from metalwork factories to electronics enterprises, require engineers who understand technological processes and digital control systems.

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