The peak-end rule: why an employee remembers the year differently from how they lived it
In 1993, Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues conducted an experiment whose result seems almost counterintuitive. Participants submerged their hands in cold water twice. The first time was for 60 seconds at 14 degrees. The second time was for the same 60 seconds at the same temperature, followed by an additional 30 seconds during which the water became imperceptibly slightly warmer. Objectively, the second trial was worse: the same pain plus extra time of discomfort. But when participants were asked to choose which of the two to repeat, the majority chose the longer one.
Later, Kahneman and Donald Redelmeier obtained a similar result with real medical procedures. The retrospective evaluation of an unpleasant experience barely depended on its duration. It was determined by two points: the most difficult moment and how it all ended. This effect was termed the peak-end rule, and memory's indifference to duration was called duration neglect.
The mechanism is that a person has two ways to evaluate an experience: how it is experienced in the moment, and how it is remembered later. And decisions—to stay, to recommend, to return—are made based on the latter. Memory does not store an average. It stores the most intense and the last.
In organizations, this changes the perspective on where employee experience is actually shaped.
Annual performance review. A person can work well for eleven months, but if the final conversation with their manager turns out to be unpleasant, rushed, or formal, the entire year is remembered through its lens. Not because the conversation was more important than the work, but because it was the end.
Project. A team can go through three difficult months, but if the completion was acknowledged, debriefed, and celebrated, the experience is remembered as challenging and worthwhile. If the project simply dissolved into the next one—as grueling and pointless.
Employee departure. The final weeks determine what image of the company a person carries away: whether they will recommend it to acquaintances, whether they will return, what they will say about it in the market. Yet, departing employees usually receive the least attention—they are no longer part of the plans.
Separately about the peak. A single situation of public humiliation, an unfair decision, or complete indifference in a difficult moment can outweigh months of steady, normal work. And vice versa: a single episode where a manager provided real support is remembered for years.
What follows from this in practice. Design endings, not just processes: the final project meeting, the final review conversation, and the last working day deserve separate preparation. Do not skimp on moments that will become peaks—especially those where a person is struggling. And take a sober view of engagement surveys: they measure not the lived experience, but the remembered one, and they heavily depend on what happened shortly before the survey.
It is difficult for people to evaluate an entire year. That is why they evaluate it by two moments—and it is worth knowing which ones.
#HR #EmployeeExperience #Психология #Удержание
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