Probation Period and Onboarding: Time for a New Approach

It’s commonly assumed that the probation period is a time to “prove yourself” – to meet 100% of a new employer’s expectations practically from day one. As a result, working on probation can feel like an obstacle course. The new hire senses the manager’s watchful eye and the breath of potential competition on their back. Needless to say, the whole thing is a test for the newcomer rather than for the organization that hired them. But in the era of the Great Resignation and an employee’s market, does that approach still make any sense? It’s time to change how we look at the probation period. How – and what does onboarding have to do with it? That’s what this article is about.

How the traditional approach to the probation period (doesn’t) work

In theory, it’s meant to help the organization and the employee decide whether to continue working together. In practice, employers often run the probation period to test the employee’s qualifications. Whether the employer designs it in detail or leaves it entirely up to the manager, the probation period is usually subordinated to the company’s goals and needs. It becomes a kind of extension of the recruitment process. Over roughly three months, the employee is expected to demonstrate every skill, win the organization over, and above all perform, perform, and perform some more. Phew – just reading about it can leave you out of breath, right? As it turns out, employees are getting out of breath too.

31% of employees quit within the first 6 months – and as many as 68% of them leave during the first quarter.

Source: BambooHR

It seems that in all this grand testing and checking, we lose what’s most valuable – the employee’s perspective and potential. A promising start can quickly turn into a resignation letter – and not through any fault of the employee. After all, the newcomer can evaluate the employer too, and exercise their right to terminate the contract. And while nobody is obliged to commit forever, it’s a great shame when a person leaves a company they would never have left under more favorable circumstances.

The probation period is not just about testing the employee’s qualifications

The consequences of signing the contract apply to the newcomer and the employer in equal measure. What if we told you that the probation period is really only – and as much as – a component of onboarding? Only – because complete onboarding is a complex, long-term process that starts well before day one and involves many roles and departments across the organization. As much as – because it’s the critical phase. As we already know from the BambooHR data, it’s during the probation period that the fate is decided of... no, not the employee. The employer! Within the first three months in a new workplace, the employee decides whether they want to spread their wings at this company – or look around for one that offers better conditions for working and... onboarding.

The probation period is a two-way agreement

In other words: change your approach, or the employee will change you. Today, when employers compete for talent, employees announce a “Big Quit,” and hybrid work forces all of us to be more agile, the traditional take on the probation period belongs in the attic. Instead of a one-way process built on testing, quizzing, and supervising the employee, bet on dialogue – and even tip the scales toward the new hire. So don’t think exclusively in terms of labor-law technicalities – contract duration, renewal limits, and so on (probation rules vary by country anyway).

Probation period 2.0 should be oriented around the needs and perspective of the new employee. It should be a time when we give the newcomer the best possible conditions and tools to settle into the workplace freely. And before doubts creep in: this is not just about a pleasant – but unmeasurable – relationship between the newcomer and the employer.

Well-designed onboarding focused on the new hire’s needs (and to a large extent, that’s what a probation period is) simply delivers measurable benefits – for example, 70% higher productivity of the new employee.

Source: Brandon Hall Group

So it’s worth acting on the principle: the probation period is a two-way agreement. If both sides give 100%, you get a win-win.

The probation period prepares the employee for deeper onboarding

All right – so how exactly does working on probation relate to onboarding? In our article on how long onboarding should last, we argued that effective onboarding should optimally take about 6 months (though for some industries, positions, or organizations it can be as long as a year). According to Talya N. Bauer, professor of management and SHRM Foundation contributor, an employee needs 90 days just to begin (!) performing in a new job. So it’s absurd to expect a new hire to enter the probation period fully ready to deliver great results.

From that perspective, the employee should use the probation period above all for intensive learning and getting to know the organization. The employer – for equipping the employee with the knowledge, skills, and tools that will let the new hire work independently at 80-90%.

The goal of the probation period is not to test the employee’s qualifications and fitness for a given position, but to bring them to full effectiveness in their new job.

The probation period’s role in the onboarding process

We can therefore assume that the probation period should be the middle phase of onboarding, preparing the employee for deeper, role-specific onboarding in which – under the manager’s close guidance – they will keep mastering their role.

• PHASE 1 – preboarding (starts when recruitment ends and finishes on the first day of work)
• PHASE 2 – the probation period (day one, signing the contract, welcome week, introduction to the organization, initial role-specific onboarding)
• PHASE 3 – role-specific onboarding

As you can see, the probation period is a critical fragment of onboarding from the organizational perspective as well. The most varied processes intersect here, and the paths of all the onboarding personas cross. The people team handles the formalities of hiring the new person. IT equips the newcomer with hardware and system access. HR oversees the introduction to the organization and the training schedule. And finally: the manager, supported by a buddy, kicks off role-specific onboarding. That’s the optimal scenario, of course. With the right organization and the right tools, this kind of teamwork brings the best and fastest results. It also limits the risk of any onboarding gaps along the way.

At the end of a probation period run this way, the employee should:

• know their position and responsibilities well,
• be able to perform independently at 80–90%,
• know the team, the organization, and the different ways it operates,
• have built the basic flow of their independent work and of collaboration with the team and the manager.

Why the probation period is a time for the manager and HR to work in symbiosis

Different perspectives

For HR, a new employee’s first day is above all the crowning of the recruitment process – the end of the main task. After all, they found and hired an employee who will strengthen the team with their skills and knowledge, right? Yes, but...

The manager’s perspective is a bit different. Signing the contract with the candidate marks only the beginning of a long, challenging adventure called onboarding into the role. If only it really were just about introducing the employee to their responsibilities. Unfortunately, in practice the manager is often loaded with a pile of operational onboarding tasks: ordering equipment, setting up the newcomer’s workspace and system access, watching over their training schedule. The result? Managers are onboarding-overloaded.

You can see it clearly in the results of our survey. It turns out that in employees’ eyes, onboarding is the domain of managers/supervisors (47% of answers). Next comes the buddy or another person from the newcomer’s immediate team (26% and 27%). The HR representative lands at the very bottom (7%). Does that mean HR barely participates in onboarding? Absolutely not. But it certainly signals the need to reorganize collaboration within the onboarding dream team – especially at the start, precisely during the probation period.

A shared business goal

For the manager, the probation period – just like the recruitment that precedes it – has one goal: preparing the new employee for independent, effective work as quickly as possible. The HR team should be guided by exactly the same goal. Because the probation period, like all of onboarding, is a team game played toward one goal. Hence the need to work shoulder to shoulder – from the moment someone clicks “hired” in the ATS, through signing the probation contract, to the day the newcomer reaches full effectiveness.

Why and how to set goals for the probation period

Playing a game with no rules

As many as 21% of the employees we asked about what they missed most during onboarding at a new company pointed to: “defined goals and tasks to complete during the probation period.”

This looks quite serious. After all, each of us likes to know where we stand and what’s ahead – especially in the already (naturally) stressful situation of starting a new job.

What should you consider when setting goals for the probation period?

• Present them to the employee as early as possible and make sure they stay unchanged.
• Match them to the stages of the probation period – that is, gradually increase the amount of knowledge shared, the difficulty of tasks, and the level of expectations.
• Divide them into thematic areas, e.g. goals related to: learning the organization, learning the position and role in the company, performing the job.
• Define goals for specific KPIs separately.

Design a probation period that keeps the employee for years.

Try the Gamfi Onboarding app for free!

Signing the contract is only the beginning: how to support the probation period

• Use ready-made digital solutions that help you structure the entire process. See how it works in the Gamfi Onboarding app>>
• Divide the probation period into thematic areas and assign specific roles to them. Remember – responsibility for the probation period doesn’t have to rest on one person’s shoulders (e.g. the manager’s).
• Automate whatever you can, especially operational tasks such as ordering equipment or filling out HR paperwork.
• Assign the employee a buddy who will relieve the manager and support the HR team. You can read more in our article “Why is a buddy a key component of your onboarding?”
• Gradually assign tasks of increasing weight. Divide the probation path into segments crowned with milestones and two-way feedback. Each stage should take the employee to a higher level of difficulty (tasks) and initiation (into how the organization works).
• Introduce the employee to different situations and environments – so that after the probation period ends, they can move freely across the most varied contexts of the organization’s work.
• Check employee satisfaction on an ongoing basis with pulse-check surveys.
• Give the manager and HR a tool for tracking the employee’s progress.

A wasted probation period costs a fortune

Our survey shows that when starting a new job, 1 in 5 employees doesn’t know the goal of their probation period or the criteria by which their work will be evaluated during that time. That’s a worrying figure – it means that in as many as 20% of cases, a new employee’s first 3 months are often a time slept through, or at best insufficiently used.

Tens of thousands down the drain

We calculated that the cost of onboarding an employee reaches as much as 7 of their monthly salaries. At an average salary, that’s a five-figure sum – in Poland, roughly PLN 40,000 (about $10,000). If we underestimate the probation period – the key phase of onboarding – we have to accept that this money will simply be lost. The question is: can any employer afford that?