Probation notes written now may have to justify redundancy scores in 2027

Sarah Kerr, writing in Personnel Today, argues that the two statutory dates cannot be handled as separate HR projects ^[5]. The link between them is redundancy selection. Where performance or capability is a selection criterion, the evidence behind a score may have been created months earlier, and probation records could be where that trail starts ^[5]. The Act cuts the qualifying period by 18 months ^[1]. The longer claim window arrives three months before the shorter qualifying period ^[2].

Her example is ordinary. A new hire gets broad objectives, the three-month review is postponed, concerns are raised informally, and the employee passes probation with no structured performance management afterwards ^[6]. Months later a restructure scores that person below colleagues, partly on those old concerns, and the written record holds little to support them ^[6]. "That does not automatically make the score unfair, but it may be difficult to explain," Kerr wrote ^[15]. "A manager's recollection that somebody has struggled is a poor substitute for clear objectives, regular reviews and documented conversations," she wrote ^[14].

The board-deck version of the January change is a deadline. Kerr expects organisations to put more weight on making probation decisions before an employee reaches six months' service ^[18]. "Greater rigour is welcome. Treating six months as a risk-free dismissal deadline is not," she wrote ^[8]. Employees already have protections that do not depend on two years' service, and the circumstances of a dismissal still matter ^[9]. She sees the sharpest risk where headcount cuts are expected. In that setting, dismissal during probation can start to look like a lower-risk alternative to a redundancy process ^[10].

The trade-off is speed against information. A manager who decides early on thin evidence produces the file in Kerr's example ^[6]. One who waits for better evidence runs into the six-month threshold ^[3]. Kerr's answer is to decide earlier "because managers have better information, not simply because the calendar is approaching six months" ^[11]. The same discipline applies when roles have to go. Unresolved performance concerns tend to resurface under pressure to cut headcount, and a manager may see the restructure as a chance to settle them ^[16]. "Redundancy cannot become delayed performance management," Kerr wrote ^[7].

Kerr's piece is an argument about risk, and it does not cite a tribunal decision testing it. We do not know yet how tribunals will weigh a thin probation record against a redundancy score once both changes are in force. I think the narrower claim stands without case law. Where performance, skills or capability are used to differentiate between employees, Kerr wrote, "earlier records need to support the decisions being made" ^[17].

This quarter's decision is how managers run the probation reviews already on the calendar. The consequence arrives when those employees land in a selection pool, and the Acas forecast puts many of those pools before January 2027 ^[1]. A dismissed employee by then has the longer window to claim ^[4] and AI tools to read the file with ^[12]. Kerr adds that AI cannot determine whether an employment decision is fair or lawful ^[13].