The probation review meeting is where a lot of practice managers feel most exposed. There’s a team member who isn’t quite meeting the standard, a decision to make, and a nagging worry about doing something you shouldn’t. It’s consistently one of the most common HR queries independent dental practices raise — and it’s usually more manageable than it feels once you break it into its three real components: making the decision, running the process fairly, and getting the paperwork right.
Making the decision: extend, or end?
A probation review isn’t a formality to tick off — it’s a genuine assessment point, and the honest question behind it is simple: is this person meeting the standard the role requires, and if not, is there a realistic prospect they will with more time and support?
Extension makes sense when there’s a specific, genuine reason to believe performance or conduct will improve — not just a hope that it might. Useful markers: specific issues have already been raised with the employee, they’ve had a fair chance to address them through support or feedback, and there’s a concrete reason to think more time would make a real difference. Extension without any of this — pushing the decision back simply because it’s uncomfortable to make — usually just delays the same conversation, and can make an eventual dismissal look less fair, because it suggests expectations weren’t made clear the first time round.
If the standard genuinely isn’t being met and there’s no real reason to expect it will be with more time, ending employment during probation — while still requiring a fair, properly followed process — is usually the right and kinder decision for everyone, including the employee, who deserves clarity rather than a drawn-out uncertain period.
What to check now: whether an extension decision is based on specific evidence that improvement is realistic, or just a reluctance to make the harder call.
Running the process fairly: why “still on probation” isn’t a complete answer
Probation gives employers more flexibility than a standard dismissal, but more flexibility doesn’t mean no process. Even during probation, certain protections apply regardless of length of service — discrimination law, for example, has no qualifying period. A dismissal connected, even indirectly, to a protected characteristic, including pregnancy or maternity, or a health condition that qualifies as a disability, carries real risk no matter how early in employment it happens.
A fair and safe process, even a short one, generally includes: a genuine reason that’s specific and can be evidenced, rather than vague dissatisfaction; some opportunity for the employee to understand the concern and respond to it before a final decision is made; consistent treatment across similar cases, since treating two people very differently in similar situations is itself a risk; and proper documentation — notes from review meetings, specific examples, and a written outcome.
Trainee and apprentice dental nurses need an extra check here. Ending employment during their probation needs to be reviewed against the training agreement and any funding conditions attached to the apprenticeship, which can carry separate obligations that don’t apply to other roles and are easy to miss in the moment.
What to check now: whether you have specific, documented examples ready before any review meeting, and whether similar situations have been handled consistently across your team.
Getting the paperwork right
Whatever the decision, the paperwork is what protects the practice if it’s ever challenged. Four documents are worth having ready as templates before you need them:
- Invite to review letter — sets out the purpose of the meeting and gives reasonable notice
- Extension letter — confirms the new period, the specific reasons, and what improvement needs to look like by the next review
- Confirmation letter — for when probation is passed
- Termination outcome letter — confirms the decision, the reason, and notice arrangements
Generic templates downloaded from a general business site often don’t reflect dental-specific working patterns or training obligations, and practices that adapt them without proper review sometimes end up with letters that reference the wrong notice period or miss a training agreement entirely. The bigger point, though, is that the best-written letter doesn’t help if it doesn’t accurately reflect what was actually discussed. Before sending anything, it’s worth checking the letter matches the specific examples raised in the meeting, that the notice period matches the actual contract rather than a template default, and that dates are consistent across the letter and any internal file notes.
What to check now: whether your practice has a ready, dental-specific set of invite, extension, and outcome letters — and whether the last one you sent was genuinely personalised, or a template with the name changed.
The common thread
Almost every probation problem we see traces back to the same root cause: a decision made without clear evidence, a process that skipped a step because it felt unnecessary, or a letter that didn’t quite match what actually happened. None of that requires bad intentions — it just requires the right structure in place before the pressure of a specific case makes it harder to think clearly.
How Agilio can help: The extend-or-end decision, the fairness of the process, and the accuracy of the paperwork all benefit from an experienced second opinion — because the cost of getting any one of them wrong is real, whether that’s a prolonged performance issue or a dismissal that doesn’t hold up. Agilio’s dental HR Consultants talk practice managers through this exact situation regularly, provide dental-specific letter templates, and can review a specific case before you act. If you’ve got a probation review coming up, speak to our HR experts first.