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When referring to people that have joined a company, would the term new-joiners be hyphenated or not?

My understanding is that the word is a compound noun where "new" is the adjective and "joiners" is the noun, forming a single word meaning it should be hyphenated.

For example:

We’ve been working on a project to help welcome new joiners.

You wouldn't refer to someone as an old joiner, or just a joiner.

"new-joiner" or "new joiner"

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    We generally wouldn't call new people at a company "joiners" - they're "new employees".
    – John Feltz
    Commented Jun 28, 2018 at 15:04
  • My understanding is that the word is a compound noun where "new" is the adjective and "joiners" is the noun, forming a single word meaning it should be hyphenated. That's not correct. "New joiners" isn't a single "compound noun" any more than "red apple" is.
    – stangdon
    Commented Jun 28, 2018 at 17:51

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As a general rule compound words are not hyphenated when one of them is being used as a noun but they are hyphenated if the compound word is an adjective. e.g.

We’ve been working on a project to help welcome new (adj) joiners (noun).

but

We’ve been working on a project to help welcome the new-joiner (adj) group.

This link Hyphens provides some useful advice on the use of hyphenated compound words, as well as other uses of hypens.

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