Probation problems

SpongeParr2

Hi everyone,

I started a job 9 months ago and had a 6 month probation period.

In the first 6 months, I only had 4 probation reviews and no concerns were ever raised and I did not receive anything officially about the reviews either, so I thought nothing of it.

6 month review comes up and I get told that they are extending it by 3 months. It was just my boss and myself, so no HR or anything. I said to the boss that if I am falling short then I explicitly want to know as I do not want to find myself back in this position of being surprised that it isn't working.

After this, my role was moved to another manager for the 3 months with the assumption of working out if I go back to boss A, or stick with boss B and I had 2 reviews with both of them, at the same time. Nothing bad was brought up in these meetings.

My 3 (or 9) month review comes around and I have it with my new boss (boss and boss A wasn't in it. They say that they are terminating my contract as I have failed it. I was never told that I was falling short so I feel hugely misled. 

Not only that, I have since seen that boss B and the person who reports into him have been enrolled into an external training and that I wasn't included.

I have a right to appeal but I am already getting messages from people that I worked with saying that they are sorry that I am leaving.

I appreciate that I have very limited rights but does this sound like grounds for an appeal? I want to keep the job and look elsewhere.

Any advice would be a huge help! Far from ideal losing a job with 2 kids this close to Christmas.

General_Grant

It doesn't sound a good place to work.
Have you received written notice?
What notice period do you have?

Voyager2002

You have no rights until you have been in the job for two years.

I do suggest that you contact HR to request feedback, so that you can learn from the experience. As part of that conversation, you could let them know that you were never given feedback during previous meetings and so you never had the opportunity to put right whatever they felt you were doing wrong.

DullGreyGuy

SpongeParr2 said:

6 month review comes up and I get told that they are extending it by 3 months. It was just my boss and myself, so no HR or anything. I said to the boss that if I am falling short then I explicitly want to know as I do not want to find myself back in this position of being surprised that it isn't working.

Did they say in what way you are failing to meet expectations? Did they comment on why it wasnt brought up in the prior review meetings?

SpongeParr2 said:

My 3 (or 9) month review comes around and I have it with my new boss (boss and boss A wasn't in it. They say that they are terminating my contract as I have failed it. I was never told that I was falling short so I feel hugely misled. 

Was it the same shortcomings as the previous failure or something different?

In the interim reviews did you explicitly ask about whatever you were failing on previously or this? 


Without knowing what you do for a living, what your shortfalls were etc its really difficult to say. If you take my time as a manager in a call centre there were some difficulties on stats, at absolutely any time I could pull up your times from the phone console to see when your logging in, how many breaks your having, what your AHT was. For sales however I only got those results monthly and for QC & Customer Feedback technically I only should be able to get them quarterly. 

This makes reviews difficult... say you'd transferred to my team well within days I get a view on your telephone stats, if you joined mid month I need to wait 6 weeks before I see your sales stats under my guidance and it could be 2.5 months until I find out your cutting customers off, your adding items to the customers order without their consent etc. 

I was friends with the QC manager so always managed to get interim stats for my people but not everyone could. So there can be legitimate reasons why they are saying you're doing ok based on what they can see but actually be very disappointed when they see what they cannot see regularly. 

SpongeParr2 said:
I appreciate that I have very limited rights but does this sound like grounds for an appeal? I want to keep the job and look elsewhere.

Any advice would be a huge help! Far from ideal losing a job with 2 kids this close to Christmas.

There is little harm in lodging an appeal, if you have the right to do one. You need to be very precise about what the original short falls were, what you have explicitly done to address them and the improvements you believe you made. If its the same shortfalls guess it depends how short you are and what more you can offer/why it wasnt done in the last 3 months. If its different shortfalls then maybe highlight you turned round the other problems and what you can do to turn these ones around. 

SpongeParr2

Thanks for your feedback everyone.

It's a new role within the commercial area. I was basically given 5 things to focus on and I believe that I have hit those measurements. But they now brought in different suitability's like my ability in excel to provide insights. I pointed out that I said that in my interview process that I know what I want but my excel skills aren't the best and got told 'don't worry, we have people that can do that for you'. Now I have been told that the scope of the role has changed and it is key to it.

I didn't specifically ask how the probation was going, as I was explicit when asking to be told straight away if I am falling short, and didn't get anything.

I should have a weeks notice but they have offered to pay up until the end of Jan. Not sure how this will look when it comes to getting a reference though, which is my main concern.