Probation Pack

Research evidence suggests that probationary periods increase the probability that employees will succeed in their new roles. These provide the company with an opportunity to effectively assess whether an employee is suitable for the role by assessing and benchmarking their capability, skills, performance, knowledge, punctuality, attendance and general behaviour. An effective probation procedure provides greater opportunities to develop and enhance an employee’s skills and capabilities, deliver the company objectives more efficiently, drive engagement through positive behaviours, increase profitability and employee retention, and minimise risks or losses that can be caused by incompetence and poor productivity

This pack will provide you with all of the essential tools that you need to ensure that every employee in your business is treated equally and that issues are addressed fairly and reasonably to ensure that your actions comply with current employment law

Why is this important?

Poor performance causes a significant cost to a business in terms of lost productivity, lost time spent rectifying mistakes, and the financial cost or damage to the company’s reputation. Providing support and training throughout a probationary period enables employees to feel safe that they have a reasonable period of time in which to ‘get up to speed’ in their new role, which improves engagement and retention of new employees. But if not managed properly probationary periods can create significant risk to the company from costly tribunal claims for discrimination, automatically unfair dismissal, or a breach of contract

A recent successful tribunal claim resulted in a company having to pay an ex-employee £3,267.42 for a breach of contract, despite the employee having a series of documented performance issues within the first 3 months of employment, because the company used the clause they had in the colleague’s contract to fail their probation for poor performance yet did not have an actual probation policy, and so could not demonstrate that they had managed the probationary period fairly or followed a fair process to dismiss the employee

Unfortunately, avoiding dealing with poor performance can lead to various toxic situations for the company:

Damaging the company reputation and customer confidence in dealing with the company or referring friends/business acquaintances in the futureLost efficiency, productivity and profitabilityIncreased time and resources spent on customer complaints due to continuous poor service or quality of goods suppliedDramatically reduced team morale & employee engagement, leading to increased disciplinary issues, grievances, and employee turnoverNegatively impacting the mental health & wellbeing of the poor performing employee and their team

There is also a severe penalty for not dealing with poor performance relating to a disability (and other ‘protected characteristics’ as defined in the Equality Act 2010 such as pregnancy, age or sex) in a fair manner. For example, an employee failing probation and being dismissed because their performance level is not at the required standard when the poor performance is affected by a disability, but the company has not discussed and implemented reasonable adjustments to the performance goals (or timescales to achieve these) could result in a successful claim at an Employment Tribunal for direct disability discrimination. The compensatory award for such claims is uncapped and the company may also incur detrimental damage to its reputation