Of course, both parties in a hiring situation hope for the best:
The new employee will love his or her job, fit in perfectly with the rest of the team AND add value to the business.
The reality is, however, not always such a happy ending.
The probationary period is put in place for both parties to decide if it is the right fit but if it is not set up properly, it can leave both parties frustrated and disappointed.
Read on to see if there’s a problem with your probation period.
We all know that time flies, especially in the whirl of managing a business as well as your personal life.
But as part of employer duties, you need to make sure you’re regularly touching base with new employees, especially during the early probation period. This will provide an opportunity for any new employee to potentially modify their behaviours, habits or focus areas if required. Be as specific and helpful as you can in providing improvement feedback if required.
This is not only to make sure everyone is on the same page, but to protect yourself and set expectations should you decide that the match isn’t working.
It’s really hard to start a new job, as everyone knows.
It’s even harder if no one explains exactly what you’re expected to do, what you’re measured against or at what expectations your role carries. New team members can definitely keep themselves busy with ‘stuff’ however you want to make sure they are focusing on things that are going to make a difference first.
Employees are definitely more likely to fail without a given set of parameters.
They need to know not only day-to-day expectations, but guidelines for what will make them successful in the role (in your eyes) and what they can do to go above and beyond.
No one improves without feedback on how to do it.
From editing to training, employees benefit from instructions on how to work better or faster or easier.
You and your employees will be happier if you work together to ensure they understand best practices, how to improve their efficiency and other tips that might make the work they produce better.
All too often we hear of a lot of errors and issues that are discovered when an employee leaves. However, think about how you may check or audit components of their work while they are still working for you.
Unless you have a clearly defined probation period in your employee contract, there’s a risk that your employee will not understand how long and what happens during the timeframe. In fact, even if you do have it in there, it does still sometimes come as a surprise to some employees.
It makes everything that much harder if you have to sit down to discuss your frustrations and your employee didn’t even realise he or she was in a probation period.
And what about if you’re planning to fire that person? Ouch.
As soon as someone starts (ie first week) set up transparent probationary reviews and explain they are for both parties to provide feedback on how they are tracking in the position/organisation. Generally we recommend doing this at the 1 week, 4 weeks, 3 months and 5 months mark (if a 6 month probation).
The recruitment process takes a lot of time so once you have invested that cost, make sure you spend the same (or more) time setting that person up for success with their induction and onboarding process.
Yes it takes time. No, you will not get the same results if you let them try and navigate their way on their own through their probationary period. Even if they are already experienced in your area – they need to understand your vision, values and key success criteria.
However, if you’re made the right hire, then it’s all worth it because in just a few months, you’ll see the person off and running, taking care of exactly what you wanted.
If you’re finding yourself nodding at any or all of these frustrations with the probation period, you would benefit with talking with me about ways you can improve the process.
Steal my easy-to-use staff onboarding planning tool to help you provide new hires with a world class onboarding experience.
Plan out the onboarding responsibilities across 7 key stages (from the hiring decision to the 12-month review).
Don’t miss any of the 40+ action points needed to effectively onboard a new hire.
[mk_button dimension=”three” size=”large” outline_skin=”light” bg_color=”#C21734″ text_color=”light” icon=”mk-li-unlock” url=”https://bespokehr.com.au/staff-onboarding-tool?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=Post&utm_campaign=Executive-Frustrations-Week-3&utm_content=August-Week-3″ target=”_blank” align=”left” id=”Buton ID” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”15″]Download It Now[/mk_button]
created with