‘Hitting the ground running’ may not always
be the best approach…
Probation is an important time
for both you as a company and for the new employee. It is a time in which new
employees not only ‘settle in’ but really find their feet too. Different
companies have different expectations of this probationary period, along with
the length of probation – some businesses opt for three months, some for six
months and some go for even longer periods.
However, it should be a positive
period of time between the company and the employee. But as studies have shown,
many new starters, having found their dream job online, for
example, are having their probation period extended or employment terminated,
with poor performance often being cited as the main reason.
Why is this
happening and what are the best ways of getting new starters through the
probationary period?
There are, of course, some
employees who simply don’t make the grade and come up to scratch. However,
there are many more excellent employees being ‘let go’ because the probationary
arrangements are poor and actually let the new starter down rather than support
them in their new job.
Tip 1: Motivate, not manage
Invariably, a probationary period
will involve tracking the new employee and this in itself can actually be a
disaster waiting to happen. An administrative nightmare, full of paperwork and
tick boxes, it is a process that actually demotivates rather motivates people. This
comes from the fact that many businesses see the probationary period as a
window of opportunity for ‘getting rid’ of people who they determine as not
being suitable. BUT what this really indicates is a poor interviewing process.
Probation is not about a get-out clause.
Probation should be about engaging
with the employee on a regular basis; this should be more of a mentoring
process, with paperwork and recording procedures only coming into play if there
are genuine and serious concerns about the future performance of an employee.
Tip 2: Conversation
A daily conversation is not
difficult but conversations between a new employee and their mentor or line
manager are not always a daily occurrence. During a probationary period, as
well as at other times, making sure that managers connect with employees and
have a daily conversation is important. Without this conversation, a line
manger cannot be expected to make a fair and reasonable appraisal of a new
starter’s probationary performance.
Regular informal chats are never
to be underestimated.
Tip 3: Culture informs performance
There is one factor that has a
major impact and influence on how new starters see the company, as well as
modelling their performance to match that of the company – and that is the
behaviour of the immediate line manager, responsible for supervising the new
employee.
In fact, this is such a major
influence that in a recent study, the behaviour of the manager and the
workplace climate were shown to shape the behaviour of the new starter by 70%.
And it seems that it all comes back down to engaging the probationer on a
regular basis.
This engagement is about working
out what motivates the employee and what impacts positively and negatively on
the person and their performance.
Different things motivate
different people at different stages in their career, and this again is another
variable that impacts on how people see and perform in your organisation. Just
assuming that every new starter, regardless of their position, is motivated by
the same thing is a sure-fire way to disaster; probationary managers also need
to change their performance accordingly.
Is your
probationary period failing your new starters and business?
A two- to three-month probationary
period can be an excellent time for people to get to know your culture and
organisation as well as their colleagues. However, if you are finding that at
the end of it you are saying goodbye to more people than you are bringing in to
the organisation on a permanent basis, it may be that the probationary
period is not an organised time that is working as effectively as it should.
There could be one other issue,
however, that is stopping the success of the probationary period in its tracks,
and that is the recruitment process in the first place. It may be that in order
to salvage the probationary period you need to take a step further back in the
process and look at what objectives you are basing the recruitment process on.
How long
should a probation period be?
This depends very much on how
long you feel a new employee needs to become acquainted with the organisation
and understand the basics of the job. But does your wider recruitment process
need fixing?