Probation Overview
The probationary period at the beginning of an employee’s role is designed to enable the employee to be inducted into their position, learning the necessary skills and procedures to carry out their role effectively independently. During the probationary period the employee should complete the induction plan (both national and local) including the ‘induction skills sign off’.
For an employee who is 0.7FTE or more the probationary period is three months and for an employee who is less than 0.7FTE the probationary period is four months. If all skills are ‘signed off’ prior to this, and the induction is complete the review can happen prior to this point.
Towards the end of the probationary period Anna will have an informal ‘check-in’ with the employee. This is to hear how the induction period has been, answer any questions the employee may have, and hear feedback on how we can grow and develop as an organisation. This feedback is then fed into a quarterly report discussed at SLT meetings.
The probation review document can be found here. And the skills sign off as part of the induction record can be found here.
The probation review is a time to evaluate where a new employee is up to within their role and set priorities going forward. There can be three outcomes of a probation review – probation period completed, probation period extended and probation period failed.
The probation review has two ‘types’ of questions. ‘A’ questions are to be completed by the employee prior to the review meeting and then ‘B’ questions by the line manager during the meeting as discussions are taking place. The line manager is then to make any additional comments and give the outcome of the review period.
The questions are framed to allow opportunity to consider the 3 “C”s – Competence, Character and Chemistry
The Skills portion of the induction and review assesses competence.
Concerns of issues that have arisen about Character and Chemistry are often harder to address but just as important. It is important that conversation about culture and values and challenges for the new employee in these areas form part of 1-2-1 supervision during induction as this will lay the groundwork for this conversation at review.
Examples that might give concern re character & chemistry include:
- How disagreements are handled: an employee questions a particular process or policy that is different from previous and circumnavigates line management channels to raise this / complains about policy or practise to others.
- Work ethic:employees’ approach to out of hours work, sharing responsibility with others, picking up tasks for other people when the wider team is stretched.
- Values: Not able to prioritise Safe Families five core values, these are not values that the person would find themselves celebrating or being willing to hurt for,
Where it is thought that a probationary period should be extended or failed, the employee should be aware of this as progress should be being discussed throughout the probationary period. If this is the case, where possible Seniors / Programme Directors should be involved in the probation review. If a probation review is extended a date should be set for when the extension review will be completed and agreed actions should be documented to be completed in that period.
Once any probation review is completed (regardless of the outcome and if the first or a further probation review meeting) the line manager should upload the document onto the staff database and complete the review period outcome (this is in the review tab on the left-hand side of the employees profile). A letter will then be sent (by Anna) to the employee to confirm the outcome of the review period.