Longer Probation Periods for New-Hire Federal Employees

The Government Manager’s Coalition (GMC) and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) have jointly sent a letter to congress to lengthen probationary periods for new-hires in the federal service to better reflect the realities of the modern workplace.

Current Probationary Period

At present, new-hires are given an automatic 12 month probationary period that his inclusive of any training time. It is a straight 12 months from the date of hire. This period is supposed to allow managers and supervisors provide an adequate assessment of the employee’s ability in the position. It also ensures that employees within that 12 month period that fail to live up to expectations can be terminated much easier than the more formalized process that protects most federal employees. After the employee reaches the first day after 12 months they fall into the more protective status whether they have received an adequate assessment or not.

Current Issues

GMC and NARFE both agree that the current one-size system does not fit the complex realities of the current workplace. All positions are not equal and as such although many positions may only have 2-4 weeks training, some more complex departments and positions can have 2-3 month training regimens in order to fully bring a new-hire up to speed. This leaves many agencies only 9 months to assess the potential of new-hires and less if you consider it generally can take up to 1 month to properly evaluate new-hires.

The Problem is Real

Many Managers find themselves in a position to have to make a “gut” call on employees without a true evaluation process with enough time to truly flesh out these new employees. Worst, there are a number of agencies that have been unable to make the deadline for review and those new-hires, when the twelve months is up. This places an unfair burden on the employee to perform and the manager to make final decisions with minor observation and guess work. The request comes on the heels of a GAO report outlining the issues with probationary periods and its resultant substandard employees that get into federal service simply because their probationary periods have lapsed.

Necessary Changes

The letter requests that Congress look at the matter in their next session that starts January 12, 2016. One of the major changes being proposed is that training not be included in the twelve months of probation. Any position that has less than 1 month of training would remain at a twelve month probationary period. However, positions that have longer than a month training would in effect extend the probationary period by the number of weeks past the one month. For example if there were 7 weeks of training in a position, 3 weeks would be added to the probationary period making it 12 months and 3 weeks long. In this manner it gives managers a minimum of 11 months to properly evaluate and assess employees.

Secondly, the groups propose that managers have to actually certify an employee before their probation ends in order to put an end to auto-enrolled new-hires that simply go past 365 days without a formal review. This puts the onus on employees to get evaluated and ensures only the best employees in federal service.

Unfortunately, NARFE may see this backfire as they struggle to maintain their representation across older established workers and younger ones just getting into service.