Halfway round a client's site last week, an operations director stopped beside a press line and asked me something I couldn't answer neatly. How long, exactly, does he get to find out whether a new maintenance manager is any good?
From 1st January, a good deal less than it used to be. Protection against unfair dismissal once took two years to build up. Acas has now updated its guidance to say it arrives after six months in the job, and anyone who already has six months' service on that day is covered straight away.
That's about ten weeks away.
He wasn't panicking, which surprised me a bit. Nobody has been. The mood among operations directors and plant managers is quieter, and they ask the question like people who suspect the honest reply is less time than they'd like. Fair enough, really.
What changes for employers on 1st January?
Employees need six months' service rather than two years to bring an ordinary unfair dismissal claim, for dismissals on or after that date. Compensation loses its cap too. According to the government's own unfair dismissal factsheet, the current limit is the lower of £123,543 or 52 weeks' gross pay, and once the change lands that ceiling disappears.
You can still dismiss fairly after six months. Acas is clear on that.
What shifts is how much you need to be able to show, and how expensive it gets if you can't.
Does a six-month probation period keep you safe?
Not on its own. Acas says the Employment Rights Act doesn't touch probation periods, there's still no legal requirement to have one, and a probation can run for any length you like. But it also warns that finishing probation before the protection starts doesn't avoid the legal risks.
Then there's the line I'd underline if you hire engineers. Acas notes that a probation of six months or less may not suit every role, particularly technical or specialist ones.
On a shop floor, it matters.
How long does it take to judge an engineering manager?
Longer than six months, more often than not. The first quarter goes on learning the site: which machines misbehave, who really runs the night shift, why the maintenance log looks the way it does. Nobody has a fair read on a new manager by then, including the manager. I've seen people look quietly brilliant at week twelve and ordinary by autumn, and the reverse too.
The tests that tell you something come later.
There's the first planned shutdown, and the first customer audit. Then a budget round where they have to argue for spend. And somewhere along the way a good technician hands in notice, and they must decide whether to fight for them.
Plenty of those sit beyond month six, and a maintenance manager who starts in the autumn may not meet a proper summer shutdown until month eight or nine.
So a contract clause saying you'll decide at six months asks for a verdict before the exam has been sat. And I'd go further. It nudges a nervous employer towards a quick no, because the alternative is carrying the risk afterwards with no ceiling on it.
Why does this change the cost of a miss?
For most managers earning below the cap, the 52-week limit was the one that bit. That was painful, but you could put a number on it and still sleep. Without it, the compensatory award is no longer held to a ceiling.
For a technical director or an operations director on a full package, that's a different conversation.
I'm not a lawyer, and you should talk to one about your own contracts before you change anything. But I don't need to be a lawyer to see that the price of a wrong hire has gone up. A manager who isn't working out used to be a problem you could outlast. Soon it may be one you can't afford to get wrong or to unwind.
And the employer isn't the only one who pays for it. A mis-hire at manager level means a team that spends a year working around someone, and a few of the best people deciding they've seen enough.
What I'd change before the next offer goes out
Start with selection, because that's where the risk is cheapest to remove. If the first real test of a candidate's judgement is their first live shutdown, you've left the assessing too late. Ask them to talk you through the last one they ran, who they argued with and what they'd do differently. Then check it with someone who was in the room.
Next, write down what good looks like at month three, month five and month nine. Use terms a person could actually observe. Vague phrases such as settling in well won't survive a tribunal. A signed-off shutdown plan, or a recurring fault on line two that finally stopped recurring, will.
Review against it in writing and keep the notes. That paper trail protects you if things go wrong, and it protects the manager if things go right.
Think, too, about an engineering manager probation period that reflects the job, whether that means informal check-ins well past six months or a split role with narrow objectives for the first half-year.
Either route beats hoping a clause does the work for you. And make the hire when you've found the right person, not when the budget line happens to be open. I wrote recently about why the senior hire can't wait even when everything else is on hold. It holds even more once a bad appointment is harder to undo.
None of this is complicated. It just asks for the thinking to happen before the offer rather than after the first awkward review, which in my experience is when most of it gets done.
I never did give him a tidy answer beside that press line.
I'd rather he spent the next ten weeks deciding what good looks like at month six than finding out in front of a tribunal. Ten weeks isn't nothing. And I'd rather the manager knew it too.
If there's an engineering manager vacancy on your side, tell our engineering recruitment team about it and we'll begin the shortlist.
