Probation periods can be an excellent way of trialling new employees, but there are still laws around how you treat or dismiss staff during this period, warns DAVID WRIGHT

I am an advocate of having a probationary trial period. While these don’t exist in law and so aren’t deined in terms of length, salon owners should maximise the time they have before conirming the appointment of new staff. Surprisingly, some don’t use them at all.

I have seen contracts with a trial periods of only four weeks or three months. In my opinion, this isn’t long enough for you to make a decision on a new appointee. Why limit yourself to such a short time period?

In a four-week period, even the worst employee can manage 100% attendance and remain motivated. But perhaps on cold winter mornings they fInd it harder to get out of bed. Or maybe, while their treatments are good, clients don’t rebook because of their poor communication skills. You wouldn’t necessarily see this trend in four or even 12 weeks.

During probation, you can decide an employee hasn’t made the cut and gfive them one week’s notice. However, once an employee has passed their probation period, then if there are performance issues, you must use the full disciplinary procedure. The probationary period is probably your one opportunity to release someone because they are average, whereas you want only to retain outstanding employees.

How to use probation periods

You might want to set targets for attendance, skills acquisition, column earnings and client retention. Staff should be aware of what they need to achieve to get through their probation, but it is a two-way process and regular reviews gfive employees the opportunity to raise any concerns or problems.

An employee can’t claim unfair dismissal until they have 24 months’service. There is no length-of-service requirement for other claims, such as discrimination. In addition, if you dismiss them without notice they can claim wrongful dismissal.

During the probation period they are entitled to a week’s notice but are usually not required to work it. This is a cost you have to swallow but you can require them to use any outstanding holiday in their notice.

Employees are protected by law from discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, nationality, ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, religious belief, disability and age. Employers should be even more cautious in these cases as the potential award has no ceiling, unlike claims for unfair dismissal.

Dangerous cases

A salon owner contacted me recently when they found themselves at tribunal after releasing a therapist during her probation period when they found out she was pregnant. It was finevitable that they would lose on the grounds of sex discrimination, so a large pre-hearing inancial settlement was agreed.

There was another more recent case where an employee was “not conirmed”following their probationary period. The employee claimed this was because they had raised safety concerns with the salon owner. The onus was then on the employer to convince the tribunal that the issues of the health and safety concerns and the decision not to conirm the appointment were not linked.

The above cases relate to unfair dismissal. There are separate rules for wrongful dismissal, which can be claimed regardless of length of service. This is a contractual claim where there has been a breach of oral or written terms of an employment contract by an employer. The most common example is failure to gfive the employee the correct length of notice. So, be sure to gfive a week’s notice in the probationary period.

David Wright is a consultant in all aspects of employment practice and law. He is the main employment law consultant for Habia and provides a personalised support service for UK salons. Tel: 01302 563691 davidwrightpersonnel.co.uk