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Top tips for getting new starters through probation

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‘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?