I have been a manager for nineteen years, and in that time I have developed what I like to think of as a light-touch approach to probation. Somebody joins; I say hello to them in the kitchen area during their first week; and then I allow roughly two years to pass in a spirit of open-minded observation. By the end of it I generally have a view. It is not always a well-founded view, but it has had time to settle.

This is now under threat. From January 2027, under the Employment Rights Act, the qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection is due to fall from two years to six months. I have read this several times, and each time the number has stayed the same.

A Corridor Acquaintance

Our newest starter joined in September. Her name is Kirsty, or possibly Kirstie; it appeared on a meeting invitation once, but I did not like to check. I know that she is in the team, that she has a lanyard, and that she once held a lift for me. I would call this a solid foundation for a working relationship, though I am told it is not a solid foundation for a decision.

When asked how she is getting on, I say that she is still finding her feet. This has served me well for years. It sounds like warmth and commits me to nothing, and it can be repeated at monthly intervals until the person leaves of their own accord or is promoted by somebody else. Six months removes the feet. Nobody can still be looking for them after half a year, not even a Kirsty.

The Bandwidth Problem

I raised the matter with Priya Nair, our HR business partner, who suggested I begin by establishing what Kirsty’s objectives are.

“The simplest approach is a clear set of expectations, reviewed regularly, with notes,” said Priya Nair, HR business partner. “Ideally written before month four rather than on the evening before month six.”

I said I had not had the bandwidth. Priya said that bandwidth was more or less what a manager is paid to have. I said that was an interesting way of looking at it, which is what I say when I have lost an argument.

I then took the problem to Gareth Lowther, our operations director, who has managed me for eleven years and whose counsel I value because it never involves doing anything.

“I wouldn’t lose sleep,” said Gareth Lowther, operations director. “I’ve not been entirely sure what you do since 2014, and we’ve all got by perfectly well.”

I found this reassuring for about a day, and then I found it less so.

The Concept Itself

The longer I think about performance management, the less I understand how it was ever meant to work. As far as I can tell, it is a process in which one person who does not know what another person does is asked to judge how well they are doing it, using a form. The form has a box for strengths and a box for areas of development, and over the years I have learned that the second box is the one in which one writes “visibility”.

I did try to find out what Kirsty does by looking at what she produces. There is a spreadsheet with her name in the file properties, which I opened, and which contained a great many columns. Some of them were coloured. I closed it with the feeling that I had walked into someone else’s kitchen, and that I would be unwise to comment on the arrangement of the cupboards.

My plan, such as it is, is to hold a one-to-one. I have never held one with her, although one was scheduled in October and then moved by me to November, and then to a date that I believe has now passed. I have drafted three questions. The first is “How are you finding it?”, the second is “What are you working on at the moment?”, and the third is “Is there anything I can do to support you?”, which I have put last because I would very much prefer that the answer to the second one is long enough to make the third unnecessary.

The meeting is in the diary for the fourteenth, thirty minutes, with a video link in case either of us is working from home, which I suspect we both will be. I intend to move it only once.