Probationary Trial Period Screening

In Simple Words

Buying an expensive piece of equipment with a 90-day return policy gives a business owner the safety net needed to make the purchase, because they can easily return it if it malfunctions during initial real-world operation.

Research question

Strict employment protection laws make terminating open-ended permanent contracts costly, creating high hiring risks for firms evaluating candidates with uncertain productivity.

Participants

N = 7,438 French firms subject to standard 1 to 3 month statutory probation periods (période d'essai) for permanent contracts.

Study Design

12-month post-hire longitudinal administrative tracking of jobseekers placed in permanent open-ended contracts (CDI).

Results

Combining PES pre-screening with statutory trial periods resulted in a 14% increase in hires who remained off unemployment registers for at least 12 months (0.046 quality hires, p < 0.01), showing that 100% of the net permanent contract hiring increase successfully survived probation.

Takeaway

Utilize standard 1 to 3 month statutory probation windows alongside external candidate pre-screening to mitigate termination risks associated with open-ended permanent employment contracts.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Longitudinal study

A study that checks the same group of people at different times. This lets researchers examine how things change over time.

ExampleResearchers ask the same workers about their wellbeing at the start, after three months and after six months.

NICE · Longitudinal study ↗Read more about longitudinal study →

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