When you hire a new team member, there will usually be a probationary period. This is a time during which both parties can establish if hiring them was the right decision. It’s a fixed amount of time, so proactively managing probationary periods is important. If it applies, details of a probationary period must be included in employment contracts. Wording should include the duration, the right to extend, and areas of their performance and conduct which will be considered.

Many companies have rebranded the probationary period, using terms like ‘Introductory Period’ or ’90-day journey’. They mean the same thing; Was hiring the new joiner the right decision?

Probationary periods ensure that an employee’s expectations are managed. They understand that what they do during that time matters and can affect their ongoing employment.  If the end of a probationary period goes left unchecked, the default position is that they have successfully passed.  This may result in changes to their entitlements and notice period, and it’s more difficult to address those issues after that.

Areas to consider

When it comes to assessing whether the hiring decision, it shouldn’t just be about technical ability in their field of expertise. It’s about the behaviour they demonstrate, their understanding of the business or their desire and enthusiasm to learn and make a positive contribution. In an SME one person can make a big difference to the team dynamic and the success of the business. Therefore, it’s important that you use the probationary period to determine if you made the right decision. The probation period is also about the employee deciding if this is the right place for them. It’s important that you engage in two-way dialogue about how they’re getting on.  The probationary period provides an opportunity to ‘course correct’ if things doing seem to be going to plan, either for you, the team or the new hire.

Tips for managing a successful probation

Managers need to spend time proactively managing probationary periods. It should be expected that more management time will be spent on this person during that time. The time you spend is an investment which will hopefully lead to a direct return.

So what should managers be doing during their new hire’s probation?  Here are our top 10 tips:

1. Clear job information: Make sure all the relevant information is clearly communicated during the recruitment process. That way there is no ambiguity about the role and what it involves
2. Effective induction: Ensure you have an effective induction programme. This should include information about their job, the team, the business and the way it’s structured. It should also include where they fit in, the values of the company and how you expect employees to behave at work
3. Introductions to key people: Ensure the new hire is introduced to key people on day one or at least during their first week. That way they know where to go for support if they have questions. No-one can know everything from day one
4. Meet regularly: Meet with the new hire 1-1 regularly and frequently, and make sure it’s diarised and a written note is taken and shared with them in a timely way. In these meetings you can ensure they know what they should be doing. You can provide regular feedback about how it’s going, both from the perspective of their work, as well as their behaviour. For example if their work has been accurate, or you have noticed they have been late multiple times during their first week / month. Flag what you have noticed, ask how they feel it’s going and if there is anything they’re not sure about
5. Set SMART objectives: Set some agreed objectives for the first month, and / or overall for their first 3 or 6 months. Progression towards meeting the objectives should also become an area of feedback in your weekly meetings, and follow up on email with the key points
6. Be accessible and approachable: Have ad hoc informal catch-ups with the new hire on the ‘shop floor’. Ensure your new hire has the opportunity to ask any questions they may have
7. Flag issues and concerns: If there are issues, flag them sensitively, but honestly. Explain why it’s a problem, and what you expected instead, or better still, ask them how they could have avoided the issue
8. Timely feedback: Ensure your feedback is given in a timely way. If something serious is wrong, don’t wait for the next 1-1 meeting
9. Preparation for meetings: Provide feedback in a confidential setting away from colleagues to protect their dignity. Prepare feedback properly to ensure it’s objective and delivered thoughtfully
10. Act prior to the end of probation: Make sure you meet with the new joiner before the end of the official probationary period to confirm formally if they have passed their probation. Alternatively, probation can be extended if there are ongoing issues which need to be addressed. Equally if there are too many issues you may have to deliver the news that the probation has not been successful. (i.e. you give notice to terminate their employment)

As people managers it’s in your interests to do all you can to set this person up to succeed. This avoids unnecessary additional time and resource in sourcing a new hire twice in a short period of time. That said, sometimes things don’t work out. If that’s the case, dealing with it promptly and decisively will save time and money.

Recruitment can be expensive and time-consuming, so making sure your initial recruitment process was appropriate will help.  Read our previous blog here about recruitment if you want more tips for successful recruitment.

If you would like support managing probationary periods, or you have an issue with a new hire, get in touch.

Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People® has been referenced over many years.  First published in 1989, it’s been reissued multiple times since then, and has been adapted / spun out in to targeted versions, for example focussing on teenagers, families, journals, workbooks and card decks.  He continued to release books up to a year before he passed away in 2012, leaving a legacy of effective leadership principles.

What’s it about?

Covey seems to have had a genuine wish to help others and lead by example by closely following the principles of the habits himself. He provides practical advice, which requires us to look inside ourselves.  Reading the habits, we may already find that we’re on the right track.

What are the 7 habits?

There’s much more to the habits in the book, however here is a flavour of the 7 habits:

Habit 1: Be Proactive®

Take responsibility for your life. This habit encourages us to move away from blaming external factors and responding to them in a reactive way. We should use proactive language; I will, I can etc.  and our energy should be focussed on things we can control.  The first step is to build awareness of where we expend our energy now, so we can develop into a more proactive approach.

Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind®

We will not feel successful, if we achieve things which are not where we wanted to end up.  We need to focus on what we want, and how we want to live, and then use the 1^st Habit of proactivity to get there.

Habit 3: Put First Things First®

This is where the 1^st and 2^nd Habits come together, and we can make decisions about what we will and won’t do.  We don’t have to do everything, it’s about choosing proactively what you will do, and prioritising accordingly. These decisions will be made based on our purpose, values and role, with the end in mind.

Habit 4: Think Win-Win®

Be co-operative and collaborative.  It’s a mindset which means that we seek mutual benefit with our solutions.  Covey identifies 3 character traits; Integrity, Maturity and Abundance Mentality (believing there is plenty for everyone). It doesn’t have to be either / or, both parties can ‘win’. Further character traits identified are empathy, confidence, consideration, sensitivity and bravery, which all underpin real Maturity.

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood®

Communication is key, but this Habit is more focussed on listening, and really understanding others.  We all want to get our point across, but in doing so we may not listen to the other person properly.  This means we may miss their meaning or make assumptions, based on our own point of view.

Habit 6: Synergize®

This is about teamwork, being openminded and finding new solutions. This is best done with multiple contributors who all bring different insights and experiences.  The principle of ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ is in play here.  Valuing differences is important to achieve synergy. It might feel uncomfortable initially, as there may be disagreements, but the outcome will be more interesting and successful.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw®

This means preserving and enhancing ourselves in 4 different areas of life: physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual.  We need to grow in each of these areas, for example through healthy lifestyle choices, making social connections, reading, learning, spending time in the natural world, music and art. By growing in these areas we become more able to deal with challenges, grow and continue to build on the other 6 Habits.

Although a lot of focus of adopting the 7 Habits has been on implementing these principles in leadership and management, they can apply to all of us.  After all, the title of the book is simply to make us highly effective people, whether you’re a junior executive or business owner.  If you’re new to a leadership role, read one of our previous blogs to get some practical leadership tips.

As a small business you might ask ‘why do I need HR?’ if you have a small headcount and everything seems to be going well.  An HR Consultant is often engaged to support and advise when there are employee related issues or problems. That might be a situation involving redundancy, a disciplinary, grievance or dismissal.  Of course, ensuring that these situations are dealt with correctly is very important.  We do our job, help you to resolve the issue and that’s that.  All good.  But there IS more to HR than troubleshooting of this kind, and it’s important even (or I would argue especially) for small businesses. The way your people are managed will have a direct impact on their success, and by implication the the success of your business.  In a small business where the headcount is under 50, each employee has a greater proportional impact on the working environment, the team, the success of the business and how well it functions.

What do I need to know about HR?

The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development (CIPD), states that Human Resources Management (HRM) is:

“…the function within an organisation that focuses on the recruitment, management, and direction of the people who work in the organisation. HRM can also be performed by line managers.”

There are multiple stages in an employment relationship, some of which are included in the definition above.  If we look at this in more detail, the stages are:

Employees experience these activities during their journey with you, their employer. But you won’t positively impact the success of your people and your business without considering the ‘how’ in each of these areas. Let’s look at each stage in more detail:

Attraction

What skills, knowledge and experience do you need, and how will you attract these people in a competitive recruitment market?

Recruitment

What are your recruitment methods, and do they successfully identify if the candidates have the skills, knowledge and experience you need?  How many of your new starters leave before they finish their probationary period with you?

Onboarding

How can you ensure effective onboarding of someone into their job and the company, enabling them to become productive quickly and begin making a positive impact on your business?

Development

How do you develop your onboarded employees? What development and progression can you provide so that your people become better and better at their jobs and become the experts, managers or leaders of the future?  Or do people leave to get that development and progression?

Retention

How do you treat your employees while they’re with you? What can you offer them that will keep them loyal and engaged?  Or might they always be on the lookout for the next opportunity elsewhere?  How do you make sure you keep all the knowledge, skill and experience you have supported and developed from walking out of the door, reducing your ROI, and increasing your costs?

Separation

How do you treat leavers? Does that change depending on whether they’re a voluntary or involuntary leaver? What do your current employee population observe when others leave, and does that process feel dignified, respectful and make them feel glad they still work there?  Could your leavers be employees of the future, once they’ve gained other experiences, and would they want to return to you?

And the cycle continues…..

What should I do?

In short, the first stage would be to look at what you currently do.  Ask yourself and selected others 5(ish!) key questions:

1. Are your people processes efficient and effective for the business and your people?
2. What kinds of experiences do your employees have at the various stages of the employee lifecycle?
3. What kinds of behaviours do you value? Do you see these demonstrated by your managers and employees consistently in their interactions with each other?
4. What kind of employer do you want to be?  How does that link in with your brand marketing and PR?
5. How high is your employee turnover? How successful are your attempts to recruit new talent?

This is just the start of the process, and it will lead to further conversations and questions, no doubt.  Maybe this next year is the year you start to take a strategic approach to your people management practices?

If you’re asking yourself “Why do I need HR?” and you’d like more information, or if you would like support to look at any or all of these areas to make your business even more successful, get in touch.

In the workplace, managers and colleagues give feedback to others as part of their normal management and team practices.  Feedback should be constructive, and it’s a valuable process, aimed at improving skills, communication, relationships and success (individual and organisational).

In a study by Christine Porath[1], she found that higher levels of feedback were associated with 89% greater thriving at work, 63% more engagement and 79% higher job satisfaction.  She also found that giving honest, careful feedback and creating a ‘feedback loop’, (where team members provided feedback to each other), created stronger connections, and better relationships at work.  Adding recognition and / or reward in to the mix lead to employees becoming happier and more engaged.

The good and the bad

Provided the feedback is truly constructive, there’s no such thing as ‘bad’ feedback as all feedback of this nature will be valuable.

But if that feedback is not constructive, or not delivered in an appropriate way, I think we can probably call it ‘bad’ feedback, as it will often have the opposite effect of what is desired. i.e., it resulted in a disengaged, demotivated employee, and ultimately damage their success and potentially that of the team.

How to give good feedback

For many years there was a well-known saying linked to giving feedback which was referred to as the ‘**** sandwich’ i.e., say something nice, say something negative and then distract the person with something positive again. It seems this doesn’t work because the ‘negative’ points get lost, with people, understandably, clinging to the positive messages.

Here are our top tips for preparing and providing good quality feedback.

Preparation:

• Be clear what you’re providing feedback about and consider what you want the outcome to be
• Allocate enough time to the feedback session and make sure it’s in a confidential setting without interruptions
• Be factual, specific, kind and objective – describe behaviour / actions / outcomes, not personality, attitude or character
• Provide the context and describe what you noticed.  E.g., “I noticed that your reports have been submitted 2-3 days late on a couple of occasions lately”
• Outline the impact and why it’s a problem
• Write down the key points you want to get across.

The meeting:

• Present your prepared observations
• Be mindful of your body language and tone.  Keep it calm and respectful
• Ask for their perspective of your observations
• Encourage them to explore alternatives – ways to improve next time
• Present feedback as a positive opportunity, not a threat, and include a balance of feedback (i.e., if some things went well, say so)
• Listen actively, show empathy and demonstrate you’re listening – paraphrase and reflect what you’ve heard
• Acknowledge their feelings
• Reaffirm that your intention is to offer feedback to help them improve their performance, and help them progress, develop, grow in their role and the organisation.

Feedback should be given as close to an issue arising to ensure it’s relevant, and to demonstrate that it’s important.  Don’t wait for your next scheduled monthly or quarterly 1-1 to share the feedback.

If you need to give difficult feedback to an employee and you’re not sure how, get in touch.

[1] Mastering Community: The Surprising Ways Coming Together Moves us from Surviving to Thriving by Christine Porath 2022

Obviously, employers are always keen to make successful hiring decisions. However it is common for a new hire to be unsuccessful in probation. This is often because it transpires that they don’t actually have the skills and experience needed for the job.

Why does this happen?

There are two potential answers to this question:

• The criteria for the job was not correctly defined at the start, and / or
• The questions during the selection process did not successfully establish the skills and experience of the candidate.

A great deal of management time and effort (and often direct cost) goes in to recruiting and onboarding a new employee, so when it doesn’t work out, more management time goes in to dealing with the problem. There are often direct costs in paying notice in lieu and untaken holiday when the leaver is processed.  You then end up doubling the recruitment costs and time for filling that role, when you repeat the process to recruit a better replacement.  So, getting the selection process right, makes business sense.

Tips for making successful hiring decisions:

• REALLY think about the job you need to fill. Consider the skills and experience that person needs to have.
• Create a job ad and job description which clearly articulates the qualifications, skills and experience you’re looking for. This will enable potential applicants without the skills you need to self-select out of the process.
• Involve more than one person in the shortlisting and interviewing process and spend time preparing together.
• Devise interview questions which are open and based on the candidates’ experiences. Plan to have a two-way conversation with them about it, so you can assess them against what’s required.
• Probe the candidate on their experience to ‘drill down’ in to the detail.  This will eliminate any potential embellishments, assumptions or misunderstandings about the experiences they have actually had.
• Ensure all candidates are interviewed in the same robust way, regardless of whether they are recommended by a contact, or you have worked with them before.
• Ensure one of the interviewers is taking notes of the candidate’s responses (the content, not their opinion about it). This will serve as an accurate reminder about the candidates, so you can discuss your thoughts about them effectively afterwards.
• If you’re in doubt about a candidate, ask them back, or meet them for coffee so you can ask them more about the areas where you feel less convinced. Or involve a third interviewer to do this – prepping with them about the areas of focus/concern.
• Do not appoint someone just because they are the best in an unsatisfactory group of candidates. If they do not have the essential skills and experience, and these areas cannot easily be developed or trained upon joining, do not appoint them.

Not everyone has a natural ability to interview well, but training or coaching can help your managers run an effective selection process, so they can find the right person for the job.

If you or your team need support in making more successful hiring decisions, get in touch.

Congratulations! You have achieved that long yearned for appointment or promotion in to a leadership role. The joy of your success may be palpable, and rightly so. However, an element of apprehension may make an appearance at some point.

Here are some top tips for any newly appointed leaders out there, to make sure you’re set for success.

Identify some quick wins

The first 100 days is a typical gauge of success, so speak to key people to identify some quick wins and find the right people to deliver them. Motivate, monitor and measure their progress, provide support and celebrate the successes. Make sure that the delivery of the quick wins sets the tone of your leadership style and be consistent.

Meet people and listen

Your success is dependent on other people, both in and outside of the business.  Make a commitment to meet:

• your direct reports and key people in their teams
• other leaders in the business (if you’re part of a senior leadership team)
• key partners in other business areas, with whom you can share knowledge
• key customers and suppliers

When you meet with them, ask questions about how things are going and what could be better. Listen to their thoughts and opinions and make notes.

Create a long-term plan

Whilst the quick wins serve a purpose, you also need to think long-term. Use the information from your initial meetings to identify the long-term priorities. Ensure you communicate to your team about these priorities and your reasoning. Ask for feedback, listen, then make a final decisive plan, identifying the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘when’ for each of your priorities.

Overcommunicate

Be visible and accessible. Arrange and stick to regular meetings with peers and direct reports, as well as key project leaders. Share information with them and ensure they share their progress with you.  Involve your direct reports in defining the ‘how’ in your plan. Your success is dependent on how it is delivered, as well as the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘when’.

There are many other things you could do, and there are many articles about successful leadership if you look for them. But these tips should help to send you off in the right direction. If you need support in a new leadership role, get in touch with Helpful HR.

Having the best talent in your business is key to its success. Whatever your business, if you don’t have the right people in the right roles, you may find achieving success difficult.

If you do hire the wrong person, the cost can be great. Of course there’s the financial cost of replacing people through the usual channels i.e. recruiter fees or advertising costs. It could also result in decreased productivity, decreased employee morale, not to mention the cost of management time and potentially, damage to your employer brand.

By introducing a sound recruitment process you stand a much better chance of hiring the people your business needs.

Our top tips for recruiting the right people

• Make sure you have an up to date job description outlining the responsibilities of the role you need to fill, and what skills and experience needed.
• Use the job description to shortlist applicants for interview by identifying relevant experience and skills.
• Use the job description to create themes you would like explore at interview.
• Prepare some welcoming questions, to put the candidate at ease, and smile!
• Use the candidate’s CV to create questions in the themes you have identified.
• Consider and prepare some probing questions to follow up.
• Keep the questions on point, and avoid asking any personal questions. ‘Getting personal’ can potentially get you in to a world of trouble, so just avoid those questions altogether.
• Interview in pairs, so you can really listen to the candidate and develop a rapport without worrying about taking notes, and agree with your interview partner who will ask which question in advance.
• Allow time for the candidate to ask you questions, and think about how best you can ensure you’re presenting an attractive and authentic impression of the company.
• Make sure you take notes of the actual answers given, rather than your thoughts or feelings about the candidate’s answer.

Nothing is guaranteed when it comes to interviewing and selecting the right person, but by adopting this approach you stand a better chance of recruiting someone who can actually do the job you need filled, and do it well.

If you would like help with your recruitment processes, please do get in touch with Helpful HR