Probation Periods That Actually Work (Not Just Paperwork)

You hired someone six weeks ago. Today you're sitting in a one-on-one, and the question in your head is: is this working? You don't actually know. You've been busy. They seem fine. Nobody's complained. So you say nothing, the three-month mark passes, their probation "clears" automatically, and now they're a permanent problem instead of a fixable one.

This happens because most probation periods exist on paper only. The contract says three months, but nobody put anything in the calendar to check. It's not a real filter — it's a date that passes.

Here's how to make it a real one.

Decide what you're actually checking for

Before day one, write down three to five things that would tell you, concretely, whether this hire is working. Not "good attitude" — that's not checkable. Things like:

• Closed their first ticket/task/sale unsupervised by week 3
• Ran a client call solo by week 6
• Peers go to them with a question, not just the other way round, by week 8
• Made a mistake, owned it, and fixed it without you having to raise it

If you can't picture what "going well" looks like in a specific week, you won't recognise "going badly" either — you'll just have a vague unease you keep talking yourself out of.

Put checkpoints on the calendar before they start

Three checkpoints, not one big one at the end:

1. Week 2 — a short, informal check. How's the ramp-up going, what's confusing, is the role what they expected. This one's mostly for them, not you.
2. Week 6 (halfway point) — the real one. Go through your list from above. Be honest with yourself about what you're seeing, not what you're hoping.
3. Week 11 (before probation ends) — the decision meeting. By now there should be no surprises, because you already flagged concerns at week 6.

If your only checkpoint is the final week, you've built a probation period that can't actually fail anyone — by the time you notice a problem, it's too late to raise it fairly.

Say the hard thing at week 6, not week 11

This is the part people skip. If something's wrong at the halfway mark, say it out loud to the person. Not a warning, not HR paperwork — just directness: "Here's what I expected by now, here's what I'm seeing, here's the gap." Then give them the back half of probation to close it.

Two things can happen. Either they close the gap — genuinely useful information, because it tells you they can respond to direct feedback under pressure, which is exactly what you'll need from them later. Or they don't, and now week 11 isn't a shock to either of you. You're not firing someone out of nowhere; you're following through on a conversation you already had.

The employers who dread probation conversations are almost always the ones who never had the week-6 talk.

Separate "struggling with the job" from "wrong for the job"

Before you end a probation, ask which one you're actually looking at:

• Struggling with the job usually looks like: slow start, but visibly better each week, asks good questions, owns mistakes. This is normal ramp-up, especially for a junior or a career-changer. Extending probation by a month, with a clear plan, is a reasonable call here.
• Wrong for the job looks like: plateaued rather than improving, the same mistake recurring after being shown the fix, or a gap between what they say they've done and what you can actually see they've done.

This distinction matters because extending probation on the wrong person just delays a decision you've already made — and extending it on the right person because you're impatient can cost you someone good.

If you're going to end it, do it cleanly

• Don't let it drag past the contractual date "to be fair" — that's usually you avoiding the conversation, not fairness.
• Say it plainly: what wasn't working, that you'd checked in about it before, and that the outcome is final.
• Pay whatever notice or accrued leave you owe, in full, without being asked twice.
• Don't over-explain or soften it into something unrecognisable. A muddy ending is worse for both of you — they can't learn from it, and you'll second-guess yourself for weeks.

One honest note: none of this removes the discomfort. Ending a probation always feels bad, even when it's clearly right. That's not a sign you did something wrong — it's just what the moment feels like.

A word on using probation to cover for a bad hiring process

Probation is not a substitute for a proper interview or a work sample before the offer goes out. If you're relying on probation to catch things a 45-minute unstructured interview should have caught — can they actually do the core task, do they follow through, is the CV accurate — you'll keep churning through people at real cost: onboarding time, a seat that isn't producing, morale on the team that covered the gap. Testing job-relevant skills before the offer catches a lot of what probation is currently being asked to fix after the fact. Probation should be checking for fit and follow-through you genuinely can't see until someone's actually working — not doing the job the interview skipped.