Can we update an entity in @PrePersist of another entity

Currently I have two entities (Employee, Company) and Employee has many to one relation to company. Company has a field lastPersonJoined and on each Employee insertion, lastPersonJoined in Company entity is updated . This can be implemented in service layer as well but i really want to understand can we do this in @PrePersist or @PostPersist? When i do the before i didn't face any errors but its not commiting to DB. Correct me if i am wrong i think since company is not managed entity its not saving to DB. @Entity public class Employee{ ... @column(name) public String name; @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, optional = false, cascade = {CascadeType.MERGE, CascadeType.PERSIST, CascadeType.REFRESH}) @JoinColumn(name = "id", referencedColumnName = "id", nullable = false) @ToString.Exclude private Company company; @PrePersist public void prePersist(){ company.setLastManJoined(name); } }