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**Supervisory  Probationary Period: A Missed Opportunity**

As  stated in our 2005 report *The  Probationary Period: A Critical Assessment Opportunity*, the  probationary period is a critical step in the applicant assessment  process.  The  probationary period provides the Government an opportunity to evaluate an  individual’s conduct and performance on the job to determine if an appointment  to the civil service should become final.   In that study, we found that supervisors were not making effective use  of the probationary period.  In a  subsequent study, *A  Call to Action: Improving First-Level Supervision*, we found that the  supervisory probationary period is not being used any more effectively.

When  initially appointed to a supervisory position, all Federal supervisors are  required to serve a probationary period.   Unlike the length of the non-supervisory probationary period—which is  one year—the head of an agency can determine the length of the supervisory  probation period, as long as it is a reasonable fixed duration, appropriate to  the position, and consistently applied.  If  a supervisor does not perform successfully during that time, he or she should be  removed from the supervisory role and returned to a position of no lower grade  and pay than the previous position.

Data  from the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) Central Personnel Data File  indicates that Federal managers are rarely using the probationary period to  remove unsuccessful supervisors from their positions.  In Fiscal Year 2007, 28,731 supervisors were  hired but only 117 actions were taken by all Federal agencies due to new  supervisors’ failure to successfully complete the probationary period.  Seventy-three of these actions were  reassignment to non-supervisory positions and 44 were separation from the  agency.

Because  the length of probation varies by agency, we cannot directly compare the  percentage of new supervisors who failed probation in that year with the number  hired.  However, the number of actions  taken each year can supply us with a rough estimate of the percentage of new supervisors  who do not pass probation.  For FY 2007,  just four-tenths of one percent of new supervisors were either reassigned to a  non-supervisory position or were separated.  We found consistently low rates of  unsuccessful completion of the probationary period going back to 1998.

It  is unlikely that such a small a percentage of new supervisors would be  unsuccessful in a new leadership role.   This role offers different challenges than a technical position so even  the most highly skilled technicians may not perform well as supervisors.  Several studies of the success of new leaders  in a wide range of organizations have found that 20 percent or more fail.  Managers’ use of the probationary period to  make decisions about the suitability of new supervisors is even less common  than its use for the workforce overall.   In our 2005 study on the use of the probationary period for all new  employees, we reported that somewhat less than 2 percent of competitive service  employees are removed in their first year.

This  low failure rate among Federal supervisors suggests that many agencies are  failing to use the probationary period as intended, allowing many novice  supervisors to continue in a supervisory role despite observable evidence that  they will not be very successful in that role.

We  also found that knowledge about the supervisory probationary period was  lacking.  All new supervisors should  clearly understand that they must successfully complete a probationary period  as part of the selection process.  In the  2007 Merit Principles Survey (MPS), we asked first-level supervisors if they  had been informed when they first became a supervisor that they would be  required to serve a probationary period.   We also asked them if their performance during their probationary period  as a supervisor was actually used to decide if they should continue in a  supervisory role.

Only  64 percent of supervisors affirmed that they were informed of the probation  period, while fewer than half (47 percent) stated that their performance during  their probationary period was used to decide if they should retain a  supervisory role.  These data provide  additional evidence that many managers are not appropriately using the  probationary period as it was intended as the final step in the selection process  for supervisors.

Use  of the probationary period to identify effective supervisors is critical to  organizational performance because of the extensive impact supervisors have on  the performance of the workforce.  Therefore,  agencies need to hold managers accountable for using the probationary period  wisely as the final step in the selection process.