Probationary periods for employment are a crock... discuss

Great Debates
1

I’ve been thinking about it for several months now. At my last job, well, I won’t go into detail about the circumstances, but about a week before my 90 day probationary period was up, I was informed that I was “not meeting the standards of service” and let go.

I was stunned. I performed my duties with considerably more skill than probably half of my co-workers who had made probation. I also put greater effort into giving good customer service than the majority of my co-workers. I was working in an environment where it was common for people to be deliberately non-cooperative, and to attempt to pick fights and insult a crewmate on the game in front of God, the boxman, the floorman, the customers and everyone. I never returned fire. I simply did my job the way I had been led to believe I was expected to do it. I was miserable and would have quit, but I had quit a job where I had been employed for only five weeks in order to take this job, and I was afraid of having two short-term jobs in such a short space of time would look on my resume.

It’s something you see a lot of here in Vegas, especially in the casino industry. Of course, a lot of the problem is that some companies use their employment/H.R. departments as temporary service agencies, getting people hired, then just before they reach the point of eligibility for insurance benefits, letting them go. It’s actually more cost effective than you might think- with the constant stream of new applicants, it costs very little to bring on a new hire compared to what they would pay out in bennies. But they can’t shuffle everyone out the revolving door, or they wouldn’t have enough staff to keep the place running. I just wonder why the keep the ones they do.

It seems to me that a probationary period does little good as far as weeding out poor workers. People with bad attitudes simply behave themselves for ninety days, cozy up to the right supervisors, then after 90 days, the mask comes off, but since they’ve made probation, the company policy of “progressive discipline” (which is a great concept, but seldom properly used) kicks in and it takes an act of Congress to get rid of them. People with poor skills overcompensate by being general suck-ups and going overboard with customer service. Bad workers or workers with bad attitudes manage to hold on to the job, while someone who does the job well, is cooperative with co-workers and gives good customer service is let go. I’m actually wondering if the casino doesn’t have another agenda- the casino I worked at is a low end joint owned by a company that owns three very upscale casinos, and I can’t help but think they are trying to employ lower quality people as a means of encouraging their high-rollers to take their action to one of the more upscale joints. Ok, I’m in danger of hijacking my own thread, but the thought has crossed my mind.

But really, does a 90-day probationary period serve any purpose as far as sorting the wheat from the chaff and making sure a company ends up retaining the highest-quality employees?

2

After 90 days, if you hadn’t slept with the boss, they figure you’re some sort of nutcase who’s abandoned sex in favor of your holy crusade to cleanse the world of potatoes.

And companies NEED the potatoes.

You potato-terrorist bastard… grr…

3

True, there are people who can pretend to be good workers for 90 days and then lapse when they are hired permanently, but most people you don’t want working for you will show their true colors earlier.

Yes, some companies do use probationary periods as a way of getting temp workers, in effect. I’ve seen this a lot in companies that are seasonal in nature - they will hire enough people to handle the seasonal rush, and then let go all but the best at the end of the probationary period - but even in those cases, they DO keep some people on. They may only keep one in ten and the laws are not being used exactly as they were intended, but it’s usually legal.

Usually when working in these kinds of companies I could tell who would going to be kept on permanently and who would be let go, and often it was NOT the hardest workers who kept their jobs but the most sociable ones, the ones who knew everybody’s names and how all the employees related to each other both professionally and personally. These are the kinds of people who would get promoted even if there wasn’t a probationary period, it’s just the way things work. You can always find people who will keep to themselves and just do their job - you can replace them next year, maybe even get the same person back. If you are going to hire someone on permanent, you want someone who is an easily understood and predictable element of workplace politics, who will work well with others when they are promoted out of their entry level job. It seems to work.

There is an alternative - refuse to work for an employer that insists on probationary periods. There are other jobs out there. If you do choose to work somewhere on a probationary status, assume that you will lose your job at the end of your probationary period. You are not a true permanent employee until it’s over.

4

Batz-

Here in Vegas, jobs that do not have probationary periods are scarce, and nonexistant in the casino industry. Refusing to work for an employer that has a probationary period would mean either working fast food or being unemployed for a very long time.

I’m a craps dealer. Don’t know if you’ve played, but dealing a craps game involves a high level of teamwork, which basically means having to get along with co-workers while on the game, whether you like them or not. It’s not a “sitting quietly at my desk doing my work while Bob is socializing at the water cooler” situation. So the “sociable vs. hard worker” thing doesn’t apply in this situation. And it seems that the craps dealers the casinos, or at least the one where I was, keeps, are the ones who can’t quite grok the concept that a dice crew is a team. As I stated in the OP, they are uncooperative, pick fights and openly insult coworkers on the game, in full sight and hearing of both supervisors and customers. Even off the game, in the break room or the cafeteria, they aren’t great sociable people, except within their own little cliques. In a situation like this, I find it hard to understand why a casino would choose to retain someone who goes out of their way to make co-workers’ jobs difficult, gives poor customer service, etc. while “releasing” someone who tries to be cooperative and helpful with even the most vile, verbally abusive of his/her coworkers. Of course, the people I enjoyed working with the most were the ones who couldn’t deal their way out of a wet paper bag. They were at least cooperative and easy to get along with.

At my current job, things seem to work more, um, logically. I’ve been there a bit less than two months. There was a major shake-up in the dice pit last week. They started by overhiring, then several people were let go, others were placed on different crews or different shifts. I ended up getting bounced to graveyard (which is a great shift for me, because it’s the easiest to schedule the rest of my life around). I was talking to my soon-to-be new pit boss, and he told me that he had some attitudes on the shift that needed to be let go. One of the “attitudes” is a dealer I worked with at another job about a year ago, and he has the disposition of someone who just discovered his morning coffee was brewed with horse piss. Also, this particular pit boss has a reputation as being fair and easy to work for, so I know it’s not a matter of him just not liking the dealers.

This casino is part of a one-owner company, while the one I was let go from was part of a publicly traded corporation. Hmmm.

5

I can’t speak to your specific situation, but I know probationary periods have helped a little where I work (and could help more if bosses would do what they’re supposed to).

About a year-and-a-half ago, we got a new employee who was just worthless. Had he made it past the 6-month probationary period, the union would have made him very difficult to get rid of. However, because we caught it ahead of time, we got rid of him during the probationary period.

Mind you, unlike your situation he was informed numerous times that he was not up to snuff, and given many opportunities to prove (or disprove) himself. It should not have been a surprise to him when he was fired.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen several other cases where the opportunity was NOT taken, for various reasons, to get rid of people during the probationary period, and it later came back to haunt us all.

6

My company has had probationary periods for something like 15 - 20 years. Of course, there will be some people who are able to fly under the scanners (or a supervisor who ignors warning signs), but all in all, they’ve been a good thing for one and all.

** David B**'s point is an excellent one (natch).

As an employer, as well, I’ll add that I’ve only fired a couple of people ever. One was after the probationary period, the other was during. The one after the probationary period was due to a theft. the one during the probationary period was due to extreme incompetence and insubordination (ie refusing to do tasks that he’d been assigned). Was he warned? you bet. Was he given clear, direct instructions? yes. was he given an opportunity to change his behavior? yes. Does he admit any of that? nope.

It’s really, quite a drag to have to go through another hiring procedure that quickly. Hiring and training new staff is a burden we would prefer to avoid, if possible. So, the employer, in a real sense, has incentive to ‘make it work’.

I can’t answer to the OP’s contention of employers using probationary periods in lieu of temps, (I see the opposite mostly - that companies often use temp agencies as their ‘probationary’ periods).

The probationary period is also a time for the employee to discern if the employment is suitable for them, too.

7

The U.S. Postal Service has a 90 day probationary period for letter carriers, and a good thing, too, because there are so many different ways you can truly screw up, that it takes that long for them to make sure you’re really trained.

We knew a probationary letter carrier who was cut because she tried to back a 14-foot-tall Post Office delivery van into a loading dock with a 12-foot-tall overhang.

OTOH, we also know a current letter carrier who screwed up in every possible way but who made the cut. It helps if you’re sleeping with the boss. :rolleyes:

8

My company’s probation period is six months. Maybe some of the other posters who have chimed in as company owners can comment on their policies, but here your benefits do not kick in until after you have cleared the probation hurdle.

I can imagine that, given a lesser probation period of only a few weeks (or none at all), some people may try to get a job and then rack up some huge medical / dental bills the very next week. Or perhaps they have some pre-existing condition that hasn’t been officially recorded on their personal medical file yet and they are hoping for immediate insurance coverage for ::reaches into the air and grabs a disease:: leukemia.

So that’s my theory. No sick leave, no vacation, no medical or dental coverage for six months for all of you Verizon wannabes.

I’m not sure why being in a probation period makes it harder for an employer to fire you. Don’t they all have something on the application about “either party can terminate the employment agreement at any time without reason”?

9

Attaryant being in the probationary period makes it easier to fire the person -where did you get the alternate thought (if it was from me, I misspoke).

Re: bennies after probationary period - for my co - the bennies kicked in w/in a month - however, I wish they didn’t (from the company standpoint), it’s a pain in the ass to deal with the paperwork to put some one on, to only take them off 3 weeks later, and in some cases, where we get billed in advance, we have to go through a period where they ‘adjust’ the bill, but we still have to front the $$. So, if it was annoying to me in a small business, it could be a real headache in a large one.
YMMV

10

Are health benefits retroactive? I haven’t read my contract in awhile, but I seem to recall that if I passed the probationary period, I would be able to bill the group plan for any medical expenses that occurred during my first three months once the bennies kicked in.

Is this generous or standard?

11

Here in Vegas, most companies don’t cover retroactively. Most plans do, however, cover preexisting conditions. A former coworker of mine had started a new job, and while he was on proby, his wife got pregnant. She would have been covered by his health insurance. He did not make probation, and he was a good dealer (had just been promoted to floor at the casino where we worked together when he told me about this).

Where I was working, I was supposedly full-time, but I was basically treated like I was on the extra board. I never had the same days off two weeks in a row, worked a lot of four day weeks (really needed five because of the money). Interestingly, the I replaced who had had the same “floating days off slot” also did not pass probation, nor did the guy he replaced… detect a pattern?

But a dealer who was hired about a week before I did, had about the same level of skill I did, but a pissy personality, not friendly with the customers, argumentative with box and floor people, did make probation.

I think if a company really want to weed out the bad apples (there’s a mixed metaphor phor ya), instead of a probationary period, the progressive disciplinary process should be in effect from day one and actually be used. Most companies in this town, once an employee has made probation, it is very difficult to get rid of them. Technically, employment is at will, but they have written policies of giving documented verbal warnings, then written ones, then suspension… most bosses don’t want the hassle. This creates a situation where someone who may have started off as an ok worker realizes that they can pretty much get away with murder and still keep their job. A worker who has been with the company ten years should be just as subject to firing if they engage in chronic misconduct as someone who has been there ten days. But with probationary people, they don’t even have to give you the verbal, or even let you know if you’re doing anything wrong or that they don’t feel your performance/service is up to snuff. They just string you along for eighty-odd days, then suddenly you’re in the shift boss’s office being handed a pink slip.

12

Yep, this is what I understood you to say. I misspoke- what I meant to ask is why is it easier to fire somebody just because they are in their probationary period? This implies that it’s a lot harder to fire somebody who has passed the probation period. Last time I heard, anybody can be fired at any time and for no specific reason. I’m pretty sure that it said something like this in my hire agreement: “the employee or the employer may, at any time and for any or no reason, terminate the employment”.

So why does an employer need the probationary “safe time” in order to terminate an employee? What specifically makes it so much harder to fire somebody one day past the probation period?

13

You are correct about your assement of “right to work” kinds of issues. However, when a company has a union contract or a personnel manual, issues such as termination etc. get spelled out to the smallest detail.

I’ve been involved in the firing of a person under such rules. It can be mind numbing. example-, at a correction center, I was on duty 'til midnight. My replacement called at 9 pm saying “I’ve been drinking and I was told to not come in if I’ve been drinking, so I won’t be there tonight”. I had 3 hours, late at night to find a replacement so I could pick up my toddler and head home. I was not a happy camper. At the time she had already had several employee write ups for failure to show up for work as scheduled (one was where she called in saying she was in Pennsylvania and didn’t know when she’d be back). I thought this last one would have been enough to fire her. It wasn’t. We still had to go through a long several month negotiation, meetings, proposals, counter proposals etc. Finally, it was arranged that she’d come back to work. We were not allowed to ‘hedge’ our bets by having some one else on standby. She didn’t show up. We were able to fire her 2 months after she called in ‘drunk’.

Anyhow. With a written ‘probationary period’, I’m allowed, even on paper, to simply state “things are not working out” (which is what I said to the guy in my other example - didn’t want to get into the whole discussion of ‘you didn’t do what I asked you to do’.

Without such a probationary period, I need source documentation in the file for all steps - the infraction, the meeting to discuss same, what was agreed to, time line etc. (and most should be in writting with signatures attached). I don’t want to have to go through that much effort for some one I just hired who turned out to be a ‘wrong un’.

14

My experience has been that the 90 day probation period, if used effectively, is a really important tool for management. No interview process if infallible and there are always some screw-ups who interview well. The probation period allows a competent manager who missed one jerk in an interview to recover from the mistake before the person drags down an entire department.

It sounds, however, as though you have a unique situation that a number of unscrupulous companies are using inappropriately. Start with a large pool of trained workers competing for a limited number of jobs (where can dealers go besides Vegas, Atlantic city, Reno, and a dozen “exempted” casinos or riverboats?), set up arbitrary conditions (“judgement calls”) that allow them to turn over a significant portion of their payroll without providing benefits and without suffering from training new labor, and you have a real opportunity to use a legitimate tool for a shameful purpose.

Establishing that practice in a labor-hostile state certainly helps them along.

If it is true that this is a fairly common practice (at least among some outfits), it seems to be the sort of thing that should be exposed. Are there enough no-longer-able-to-be-hired dealers working other jobs in the area to consult a lawyer regarding a class action suit? If it can be shown that these casinos have engaged in this practice for the specific purpose of avoiding legal responsibility to their employees, the workers might be able to hurt them where it counts–the P & L sheet.

(Of course, if you wanted help from the Feds, you should have looked at the legal aspect last year, before Dubya rode in to announce that corporations are incapable of sin.)

15

Well, in the case of the Post Office, there’s a fairly touchy union looking over Management’s shoulder 24/7. Sometimes there are also insurance considerations–some insurance companies won’t enroll employees until they’ve passed their probation, and since the employer only has to pay for those who are actually officially hired, it’s sometimes cheaper to just keep hiring people to work for only 89 days. That way the employer never has to kick in an insurance benefit payment.

[sub]did somebody already cover this? I’m tired…[/sub]

16

Tomndeb-

Your “wrong 'un” argument does have some validity, but consider this- what if you’ve got a potentially good employee who’s simply having a bit of difficulty adjusting to a new employment situation?

You take a person who possibly worked several years for a company that had a completely different culture, put him/her in the same job but in a different kind of environment, it might take that person a few months to learn their way around the social/political atmosphere of the new company. Do you really want to say, “Sorry, Bob, it’s just not working out” to someone who just needs a few more weeks to settle in? I’ve been in these situations myself, and once I got my bearings, was considered one of the company’s best employees.

Also, probation creates an atmosphere where a person is constantly looking over their shoulder, and it can be very distracting as far as trying to get your job done. A good worker wants to do a good job for his/her boss, whether on probation or not. Knowing you’re in a situation where you can be fired at any time for any or no reason can make a person very nervous, wondering whether a minor mistake might cost them their job. Being nervous might cause the person to make more mistakes…

Also, in Nevada, if a person is employed by a company for more than sixty days, they are entitled to a written statement as to why they were terminated, even if they were a probationary employee.

I’m thinking about dropping a note to H.R.

When a shift boss I’ve never actually worked with, and has never actually watched me deal or handle customers tells me I’m “not meeting standards” and when asked what he means by that turns away and mumbles “dealing ability and customer service” when I know I did better at both than more than half of the staff, most of whom had made probation, I start to wonder…

I don’t think probationary periods are the answer. A clearly defined progressive disciplinary policy (like the one my current employer has) properly utilized would be a lot more effective. If someone is in the office getting a written warning his/her third week on the job, they’ll probably be suspended by the sixth week and fired by the end of the twelfth anyway. So why have a period of time when a person can be dumped without explanation?

17

I’ve never worked anywhere that someone could be dumped “without explanation.” (I’ve also never worked in a (falsely named) “right to work” state.)

The probation period as I have seen it used simply reduces the amount of paperwork that must be accumulated and the automatic review by H.R. There must still be documentation and a display of how the work was unsatisfactory, and the employee still has the right to protest the firing.

I have also never worked at a place where everyone spent the first 90 days fearing imminent firing. Word would get out about such a place and they would have a lot of trouble recruiting.

Extreme example (for the sake of making the point): Employee A has five years’ service with decent reviews and gets a new boss that does not like the way his hair is parted. That boss will have to document a consistent pattern of sub-par work (to which the H.R. department will ask for a response from A) in order to harm A. Employee B, at the end of six weeks, has required eight times the training as any other new-hire and continues to cause problems within the department. The level of documentation required is lower. By the time a thorough folder of problems can be developed on B in the manner that are required to remove A, B can have cost the company a lot of time, destroyed the time-table for required projects, and wasted six months of the department’s time that they could have devoted to training B’s replacement.

I’m not claiming that the probation period always works (but usually because inadequately trained managers don’t have the skills to eliminate problems) and I will not claim that it has never been abused. I only note that in places where the job requirements and the labor pool are not so skewed as they are in your industry, it can be an effective tool. (If more people had been bounced from jobs for which they were incompetent and gone and found jobs for which they were suited, the world would be a better place, overall.)

18

This isn’t quite the same thing, but I found it interesting.

A good friend of mine recently got a hired (read: won an audition) as a bassoonist in a major American orchestra. His probationary period was, I think, two years.

I believe they could have fired him for pretty much any reason inside of those two years. Playing went in the tank, can’t seem to show up on time, “just isn’t up to our standards,” whatever.

Now that it’s recently past, he’s considered tenured, and getting rid of him would be much more difficult. Not impossible, but pretty laborious. They can’t pull a Fritz Reiner and just summarily fire him for botching an exposed part.

All of the rules about this sort of thing have been hammered out between orchestra management and the AFofM - the musicians’ union. The same union rules that prevent summary firings of tenured players also mandate that openings be advertised, and legitimate blind auditions be held to fill them - stuff that didn’t always happen 40-50 years ago.

19

First off, it is the very nature of the probationary period itself that causes people to fear imminent firing. You’re on shaky ground, you don’t really have the job. And there are many places in this town that have widely known reputations as “89 day wonders”, but they still have no shortage of applicants.

Now, referring to your extreme example. Suppose the boss doesn’t like the way a new hire’s hair is parted, even though it falls within the company’s written appearance standards. Not only does the boss not have to document sub-par work, he doesn’t even have to tell the guy his performance is not up to snuff.

I’m having a hard time understanding these complicated “documentation processes”. In every company I’ve ever worked for, the process is, supervisor tells you informally there’s a problem. If the problem continues, there’s a documented verbal warning, then a written warning, then suspension, then termination. The paperwork is a form that takes maybe a minute to fill out. Most new employees wouldn’t even need to get to the verbal warning stage. If someone is truly turning out to be a problem, if this process is implemented, they aren’t going to be there past 90 days anyway.

Incidentally, while I was employed at my former job, I was constantly being bitched at by boxmen for “not repeating my bets”, which is very important on a craps game. A bet has to be “booked” verbally, out loud by the dealer, mostly because a casino is a noisy environment, and we need to give the player an opportunity to correct a wrongly heard bet before it gets set up, also because gamblers try to cheat, and make claims on bets they don’t have, and if the bet was repeated out loud, there are witnesses as to what bets the player actually had. I was in fact quite careful and meticulous about repeating the bets, loudly and clearly. I did everything short of lean over and scream into the boxman’s ear. If I had not been on probation, company policy would have dictated that I receive documented warnings, which would have provided me an opportunity to state in writing that I had been booking the bets correctly, and that I was being disciplined based on a false accusation.

I was never afforded this opportunity. As the situation stands, it is likely that my termination was based at least in part on a couple of boxmen telling the pit boss “I’ve told her several times to repeat her bets, and she just won’t do it”, even though I had been doing it. I told one of the dealers at my current job, who spends a lot of time sitting box, about this situation, and her reply was, “Sounds like you were being set up.” She’s been in the business for about sixteen years, she knows whereof she speaks.

And so far, nobody has addressed the issue of people with good skills and good attitudes not passing probation while people with bad attitudes who are uncoopeative with their coworkers are retained, as are people who may have the right attitude, but simply cannot do the job. That seems to be the situation that prevails at my former place of employment. This is the issue that sticks in my craw, and inspired me to start this thread in the first place.

20

perhaps Thea it’s cause so far you’re the only person who sees it happening enough to be a systematic flaw. The rest of us have seemed to make the point that while it’s not a perfect system, it does allow for the company to correct for an error made in the selection process. In general, for a business to succeed, the employees should be productive. If what you describe happens all the time (bad employees making the probationary period, and good ones getting kicked out), there’d be mostly bad employees at places, and that just doesn’t seem to be a wise business move.

I simply don’t see industry wide (and I work in the employment field) a great quantity of what you’ve described. You say it happened to you personally. Fine. That doesn’t mean that it’s systematic even in your industry in your state. It may have been a practice of that one place, or may be limited to your industry, but in general, across the boards, across the states, I don’t see it happening.

Again, if you were to talk to the guy I let go, he’d probably claim that he had no idea, no chance etc. He probably thinks he was unreasonably let go. Of course, all of the other employees there were pleased to see him go. YMMV