On a PIP during probation: what protection you have, where

What probation changes, and what it does not

A plan during probation sits on different ground from one at three years' service, and the difference is not that you have no rights. It is that the route an employer has to take is shorter, and in one of the countries below it barely exists while the period runs.

Three things are true across all four countries this page can answer for. Probation is a window with an end date, and the first useful question is whether it is still open. It exists only because a rule or a contract says so, which means it can be absent or invalid, and without a good one the ordinary protection stands. And it narrows the dismissal route without switching off discrimination law, so the reasons that were never allowed are still not allowed.

This guide covers ten countries and can answer this question properly for four of them. That is the honest boundary, and the last section says what to do about the other six.

Ireland: the service gate is the real question

In Ireland the probation clause is usually not what decides it. Unfair-dismissal protection generally requires twelve months' continuous service, so for most people in their first year the gate is service rather than probation, and it is the first thing to establish.

Inside that year the courts have held that fair procedures do not attach to a dismissal for pure performance during probation — misconduct is treated differently, which is a distinction worth noticing if the employer's language starts drifting from one to the other. Statutory probation is generally capped at six months, twelve exceptionally, under the 2022 regulations on transparent working conditions. The file behind this page marks that corner as one that moves, so treat the cap as the shape rather than as a number to rely on.

The service gate has exceptions that do not wait twelve months, and they matter more here than anywhere else on this page: dismissal connected to pregnancy and related rights, to trade-union membership, or to a protected disclosure is not inside the gate. The Ireland page has what follows if the job does end, and the short version is that the record of your job search is what the money turns on.

The Netherlands: a short window, often already shut, sometimes void

A Dutch employer normally cannot end a permanent contract on its own at all — it needs a court or the UWV first. The proeftijd is the hole in that, and it is small. Two things are worth checking before assuming it applies, and both are answerable from your own contract.

Is it still running? The maximum runs from the day the contract started, so at a few months' tenure it has usually expired. Once it has, the ordinary protection is back whatever the contract says.

Is the clause valid? Under article 7:652 of the civil code it must be agreed in writing, and it is capped: at most two months on a permanent contract or a fixed term of two years or more, and at most one month on a fixed term of more than six months but under two years, or one with no end date set. It cannot exist at all in a contract of six months or less, nor in a follow-on contract with the same employer unless the new job clearly demands different skills or responsibilities, nor with an employer who is in substance the previous one's successor. Only a collective agreement can lengthen the one-month cases.

The last part is the part that matters: a clause breaking any of those rules is void, not merely unenforceable. A void clause means the gate was never open, and the employer is back inside the ordinary route — the Netherlands page describes what that route costs them.

Estonia: simplified, but the employer still has to say why

Estonian probation is statutory rather than negotiated. Four months run from the day you actually start, without anyone agreeing to it. The contract can shorten it or drop it, in writing, and it can never be made longer. On a fixed term of up to eight months it cannot exceed half the contract. Time you were unable to work — sick leave, holiday — does not count toward it, so the end date is not always four months after the start date. And extending a fixed term, or signing consecutive ones for similar work, starts no new probation at all.

Either side can end the contract during it, on fifteen calendar days' notice, and the general cancellation rules do not apply. But simplified is not unreasoned. The employer has to justify the cancellation, and may not cancel for a reason contrary to the purpose of the probation: it has to say why your knowledge, skills or personal qualities do not suit the agreed work. The Supreme Court has held that the justification can rest only on circumstances going to coping with the work itself. Where the real reason is a breach of the contract or a redundancy, probation is not the route — those grounds have their own limits. A cancellation that explains nothing has been held defective.

Two smaller things. A notice given on the last day of probation is valid, and the job then ends when the fifteen days run out rather than that day. And an unsatisfactory probation result is not among the grounds that cost you the earnings-related unemployment benefit, so it is payable — the Estonia page has the benefit line in full, because in Estonia which paragraph the ending is written under is what decides the money.

Canada: a lower bar, but only where the clause exists

Canada is the country on this page where probation does the most work and is the easiest to assume you have. It is a creature of your contract rather than of statute, so the first question is not when it ends. It is whether you agreed to one at all.

Where you did, the effect is large. In Nagribianko the Court of Appeal held that an agreed probationary period displaces the presumption of reasonable notice, and that a probationary employee may be dismissed on a good-faith determination that they are unsuitable for permanent employment, having been given a fair and reasonable opportunity to demonstrate suitability. That is a materially lower bar than just cause. The employer in that case accepted it had no just cause, and did not need any.

What survives is the statutory minimum, and only that. He was dismissed shortly before six months with one week's pay in lieu, and the week was held to satisfy what was owed. Ontario's statutory notice does not begin until three months of service in any event, so the earliest weeks carry little either way.

Two checks, before assuming the weaker position is yours. Is there actually a probationary clause in the contract you signed. And are you still inside it. Where there is no clause, the presumption is not displaced, and what you are owed is decided by the ordinary analysis instead: your termination clause first, then the common law. That is a difference measured in months of notice rather than in weeks.

A plan during probation is the employer building the record of the fair and reasonable opportunity, which cuts in both directions and is worth seeing clearly. Engaging with it is the response that serves you whichever way it goes, and the plan is also the document your employer will point to. Your own dated record of what was asked, delivered and supported is the other half of that story.

And probation does not switch off human rights law. Where a performance concern may be connected to a disability, the duty to inquire before assuming poor performance applies here as it does at three years' service, and the Canada page has what that requires.

What holds in all four

The record still matters, and arguably more than later. It is what a reference rests on, what any discrimination question would be argued from, and what you will want when the next employer asks. None of the four countries treats probation as a period in which reasons stop existing, and two of them require the employer to give one.

And the plan itself is not the instrument in any of them. In the Netherlands the employer's problem is the court; in Estonia it is the statutory ground and the written justification; in Ireland it is the service gate and, after it, the procedure; in Canada it is the clause, and then whether the opportunity to show suitability was a real one. A plan during probation is the employer building toward one of those, not a separate thing with its own rules.

The other six countries

This page does not cover the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal or the United States, because the files behind this guide do not carry their probation rules well enough to state them. That is a gap in the guide rather than a sign that probation does not matter in those countries — in several of them it matters a great deal, and qualifying periods and probationary regimes differ sharply. If you are in one of those and inside a probationary period, the page for your country is the place to start, and the probation question is one to put to a local employment lawyer rather than to infer from what is written above.

Your contract's wording decides most of this

Fairhanded is not a law firm. Probation rules turn on the exact wording of your contract and on dates, and the Irish position in particular is described by the file behind this page as a corner that moves. If a plan has arrived and you are inside a probationary period, that is a short conversation with an employment lawyer where you live, and worth having early.