Now you have found the perfect team member and they have had a successful induction it’s important to have a formal process of reviewing how they are integrating into your team and performing in their new role.
All new permanent employees (full time or part-time) should have a probation period. Generally, this is 3 or 6 months and is used as the time to determine if your new team member is going to be the right fit for your business. Additionally, when you employ a permanent team member the first 6 months (or 12 months if you are a small business with less than 15 employees) is considered their Initial Qualifying period under the Fair Work Act.
It is recommended that the probation period is set at 6 months to match the qualifying period in the Fair Work Act. This enables all parties enough time to assess if they will be suitable for a long term working relationship and also reduces the risk of needing to extend a probation period (something that can only be done with consent by both the employee and employer). If termination needs to occur during probation (by either party) then it can be done quickly and easily (as long as it is done fairly – more on that in another article).
During the 6 month probation period, I recommend that in addition to the informal conversations you will be having that you meet 3 times formally with your new team member:
- 1 month post commencement – The immediate manager and/or the business owner ensures that they are receiving the training they need and that the expectations they had of the role are being met. This is a great time to provide initial feedback on how they are progressing.
- 3 months post commencement – Now that they are halfway through their probation period, the immediate manager should meet with them to provide feedback on their performance and address any gaps or training requirements.
- 5 months post commencement – this should cover the same topics as the 3 month review but also be the time that a decision is made about passing probation. This gives you 1 month to address any lingering issues before the probation period expires.
If you have a 3 month probation period, change these timeframes to 2 weeks, 6 weeks and 10 weeks post commencement.
Ensure you book these dates in your calendar or online system so that they don’t get missed! Unfortunately, I have seen many instances where probation review dates have not been tracked and there is either last minute panic to address issues or missing the dates completely (sometimes resulting in even bigger issues).
If there are performance issues you need to create a performance improvement plan. A good performance improvement plan should outline the area for development, have specific action items and set a timeframe for the improvements to be made by. The specific action items could be things the employee needs to do or further training that needs to be provided. It’s important to ensure that this is documented and both the employee and the manager sign off on it. I’ll explore performance improvement plans further in another article.
If you do need to terminate within the probation period, ensure you follow the right processes. Have a face to face meeting (please don’t just send a text message! Yes, I’ve seen that happen) and advise your employee that they have not passed probation. You don’t need to go into detail in this meeting (and if you have followed the steps above it will be very clear why things didn’t work out) but you do need to confirm that they are not suitable for the role, the date termination will be effective from and what their final payment will consist of (notice, unpaid leave etc).
Hopefully your new team member will pass probation! Once that is done, ensure that you have a meeting to confirm that they have passed (ideally within the week prior to probation concluding) and provide them with a letter as well. Don’t forget to continue to regularly discuss your team members performance with them and set up a regular appraisal process.
Managing the probation period effectively is critical to ensuring you not only deal with any issues early, but provide an environment where feedback and development is implemented from the beginning. In my next article I will discuss how you can proactively and effectively deal with any performance issues and how to create a performance improvement plan. If you need assistance with your probation management process, please contact Katrina Haynes on khaynes@hrmatters.com.au.
About the author:
Katrina Haynes is the founder and Director of K Haynes HR – HR Matters. Katrina works with SME’s to provide practical people solutions to minimise risk and maximise profit. Providing outsourced HR and workplace improvement services, Katrina specialises in Human Resources strategy, benchmarking, governance & compliance, recognition & reward, recruitment and DiSC personality profiling. Coaching business owners, Managers and HR teams, Katrina tailors solutions to assist individuals and organisations reach their full potential.
