The government is proposing radical reforms to employment law in the soon to be implemented Employment Rights Bill.
The house of lords has suggested replacing the day one right unfair dismissal protection with a six-month qualifying period, the government prefers 9 months, but employers can choose 6 months and extend if needed.
What does the revised probation period mean in reality?
In real terms your recruitment process must be robust, and have checks to ensure that you are as sure as you can be that you are taking on the right person. We use and can provide and feedback on Psychometric testing and ability tests for certain roles, these help to predict future performance and to ensure that you have a head start and understand the way that your new hire will interact with others in the business.
As a business owner you will have a significantly reduced amount of time to assess your new hire prior to them having full employment rights.
What can we do as a business owner, or decision maker within the business to ensure we have assessed our new hire?
Prepare in advance and ensure that you have, where possible identified training needs and set appropriately timed targets to complete the training. Monitor the output closely and ensure you give regular feedback to your new hire.
You can use your HR information system to diarise any probation review meetings, and ensure these take place on time. You don’t have time for slippage on meeting arrangements.
Ensure that you have meaningful discussions with the individual and have the difficult conversations within the probation period, and ensure these conversations are documented either in note form, or in writing to the employee detailing what steps need to take place for the employee to eventually be successful in post.
This is the fairest way to ensure that your new team member is working towards the company objectives, and is able to demonstrate that they are worthy of passing their probation.
The employment contract should be very clear about the probation terms, if you are in any doubt, please reach out to us and we can help with contractual clauses, develop robust recruitment processes, hire your next superstar, and advise on the process for getting them trained and onboard and productive as soon as possible.
It is imperative that you focus and act on the output from these discussions, train your managers to own the process and to have the difficult conversations so that you are compliant and are building the best possible team to deal with your business expansion plans. If you need assistance with management training, we offer bespoke online or face to face training here in our offices or at your location. Please let us know how we can help.
Contact us if you need assistance with any of the above matters.
