The Employment Rights Bill seemed to be nearly over the line, which is why the recent change to some core policies has caused some confusion and concern.
The change centres on the right to protection for unfair dismissal and has caused a slight rift between employees and business owners.
HR teams need to understand the change and how best to adapt to the Bill before its implementation.
What changed with the Employment Rights Bill?
Much of the appeal of the Employment Rights Bill for workers was the sweeping expansion of day-one rights and protections.
Among these, the right to protection from unfair dismissal was supposed to be included.
This would have been monumental, given that the protection currently only sets in after two years of continuous employment.
However, the protection has been lessened slightly so that it now takes effect after six months.
This is still a notable step forward for employees and also manages to give business owners some breathing room to manage probation periods effectively.
How can HR teams adapt to the change in unfair dismissal rules?
Bridging the gap between what the employer and employee want is one of the biggest challenges of HR.
As such, HR teams can work with both the employer and the new employee to make the probation period work best for everyone.
While regular reviews are important, there should now be a mandatory review at three months.
This needs to include detailed feedback from line managers, supervisors and other relevant parties, coupled with the experiences of the employee themselves.
This is because any feedback needs to be handled at this stage and the employee should be given reasonable scope to improve or change to better fit the needs of the role.
All of this will pave the way for a final review at five months.
This is imperative for employers who do not want to risk breaching the new compliance rules.
This review needs to accurately determine whether the employee is right for the role and should consider their capabilities and well-being as much as the feedback from the employer.
It is now less likely that probationary periods will stretch beyond six months, so HR teams should expect the probation process to be more strenuous in determining suitability for a role.
At five months, it may be necessary to have a difficult conversation if there is a strong indication that the employee and the role are incompatible.
It should be possible to find solutions that benefit both the employer and the employee, but there is little doubt that probations will be more challenging for HR teams to manage.
