One bad seed can really have an impact on your culture.”- Mona Bijoor: Founder and Chief Executive of Joor (New York)
Hiring and retaining employees is a struggle for all sorts of companies, but for smaller ones, the stakes can be especially high. Many consultants to small business owners believe that trial employment/trial hiring periods can be quite useful to both entrepreneurs hoping to get a start-up off the ground and established small business owners seeking to maintain or increase their current level of success.
As countless small business owners and researchers will attest, the quality of a small company’s workforce can mean the difference between success and failure. Indeed, personnel costs (wages, benefits, training, etc.) are among the most expensive elements of business operations; this cost becomes multiplied if a business is saddled with poor workers. It’s hard to really know from an interview whether someone is a good fit for a company. Résumés are fairly useless and interviews are far from perfect.
As such, a better way to screen potential, permanent hires is through trial employment or trial hiring. Trial employment is pretty much what it sounds like: this period allows an employer to evaluate a new employee after hiring him or her, essentially without legal, moral or ethical commitment.
The trial hiring allows employers to take chances on candidates who might not interview well, and weed out people who make a good first impression but can’t back it up.
In many cases, trial hiring was found to be successful in the sense that, Mona Bijoor, Chief Executive of Joor, said, “Employee trial periods cut attrition to less than 10% from about 60% a year.” (Chester Higgins Jr., The New York Times.)
Some are often surprised when they hear about this, but to companies it makes a lot of sense. It’s hard to tell from a few hours of conversation what someone is really like, or how good he/she will be at their job.
It’s also hard for a candidate to tell what it’s really like to work with a company. Everyone preaches culture, but few really have a great one. Companies are thus looking for people who intend to stick around for several years – and that’s a big commitment – so why not take the time to make a well-researched decision?
Trial employment/trial hiring periods, which can range from two weeks to 90 days in length, are simply meant to give the business owner the best possible chance of securing and retaining quality employees, and releasing substandard employees without legal penalty.
“The trial employment period gives both parties a chance to size up the situation,” stated Elwood N. Chapman in Human Relations in Small Business. “The employee can test the work environment, skills required, and failure possibilities. The employer can test how the new person will produce and fit into the team. Up to the day the trial period is over, either party can cancel the arrangements.”
“The essential purpose of a trial employment period/trial hiring period,” wrote William E. Lissy in Supervision, “is therefore to allow management to observe a new hire’s performance before granting permanent status.”
Elements of an Effective Trial Employment/Trial Hiring Period
Experts would state that business owners should be the following steps when implementing a trial hiring period with a new hire:
- Make sure that the specifics of the trial employment period (length of trial hiring, for instance) are explicitly stated in company guidelines.
- Make certain that the new employee is aware that he or she will be on a trial hiring period for the specified period.
- Monitor how well the new employee executes assigned tasks, using quantitative measurements whenever possible.
- Monitor the new employee’s work habits. For example, a new worker who is consistently tardy in arriving at work or returning from lunch may well be a cause for concern.
- Monitor how well the new employee gets along with fellow staff.
- Determine whether the new hire is a “self-starter”, or one who needs continued guidance.
- Provide the new hire with feedback that will help him or her shape performance to business expectations. This will not only improve the likelihood of securing a good worker, but also provide the employer with possible legal protection in the event of an unfair dismissal legal action (documentation indicating a pattern of poor performance carries significant legal weight).
Of course, not every employee will be a superior one, and shortcomings in one (or even more) of the above areas do not necessarily mean that the employee should be let go. Factors such as availability of other workers, performance in critical areas, etc. usually have to be considered. Few companies are fortunate enough to be staffed entirely by workers of superior skills, excellent work habits, and health.
But analysts indicate that new employees who perform poorly during trial hiring periods are rarely able to dramatically improve their performance after the trial period has ended. After all, if the worker did a bad job during a trial period, when all parties were aware that performance would be monitored, why should the small business owner believe that the worker’s performance would improve at the conclusion of that trial period, when pressure to “be on one’s best behavior” would presumably be relieved somewhat?
Ultimately, each business owner has to decide for himself or herself whether the employee’s performance during the trial period warrants continued employment.
The major advantage of having trial employment/trial hiring period before considering a permanent employment for a potential worker, is that the supervisor can appraise the employee’s:
- Ability to learn and perform job duties
- Quality of work
- Productivity
- Work habits
- Cooperation
- Attendance
- Punctuality
- Other standards and expectations specific to the employee’s work situation.
If the employee is clearly not meeting the requirements of the job, the employee may be released at any time during the trial employment/trial hiring period. Note that the trial hiring period is intended to be used to determine whether the right employee has been hired for the job. Once this period ends, the process for releasing an employee generally requires further documentation.
If a supervisor decides to keep the employee on the staff beyond the trial hiring period, he or she must complete a review form and return it to the department’s HR Officer.
Notifications will be sent around several weeks before the end of the trial hiring period to allow the supervisor enough time to think about the employee’s performance and to schedule a meeting with the employee just prior to the end of the trial employment/trial hiring period to discuss performance.
Once the employee has passed the probationary period, he or she becomes a regular staff member and is eligible for all benefits available for that job classification.
At this, if a worker has been successful at his/her evaluation on the job, he may be granted a permanent status. The worker will be then be given a permanent employment contract.
All in all, a trial employment/trial hiring period is essentially a good idea for companies to utilize before hiring potential employees on a permanent basis.
