As of 13 August 2026, AI can create a probation policy for your UK employees.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   Someone with a licence or accountable authority has to sign this before it counts.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a document containing your current employment contracts, staff handbook and any existing performance or absence procedure.
   2. Gather the organisation's probation length, review dates, responsible managers, notice wording, extension rules and approval route, marking unknown items as undecided.
   3. Paste the relevant wording and organisation details into the prompt, removing employee names, health information and other unnecessary personal data.
   4. Paste the resulting policy into a new document and ask the chatbot to turn every [TO CONFIRM] item into a question for your HR decision-maker.
   5. Compare each legal or contractual statement against current GOV.UK and ACAS guidance and against your own employment contracts.
   6. Ask a UK employment solicitor or qualified HR adviser to check the final policy if it will govern disciplinary action, dismissal, disability adjustments or a disputed case.
   7. Obtain internal approval, add the policy version and effective date, then send the approved policy to employees through your normal handbook or HR process.

   Prompt

   Create a draft probation policy for a UK employer using the information below.
   
   Organisation: [organisation name and sector]
   Employees covered: [employees, workers, locations and any exclusions]
   Standard probation length: [length, or say undecided]
   Review points: [when reviews happen and who conducts them]
   Expected standards: [performance, conduct, attendance, training and any role-specific standards]
   Support process: [induction, supervision, training and reasonable support]
   Extension process: [whether extensions are possible, their maximum length if known, and who approves them]
   Notice terms during probation: [insert the terms from the relevant contracts, or say undecided]
   Outcome process: [confirmation, extension or ending employment, and who makes the decision]
   Sickness, disability and reasonable adjustments: [organisation's process]
   Collective agreements or existing handbook wording: [paste relevant text]
   Organisation's tone: [plain, formal or conversational]
   
   Write a practical policy with these headings: purpose, scope, probation period, induction and support, review meetings, performance or conduct concerns, extensions, sickness and disability adjustments, possible outcomes, records and confidentiality, responsibilities, and related documents. Use plain British English. Do not invent contractual terms, statutory rights, company procedures or legal conclusions. Where information is missing, insert [TO CONFIRM] and list the decision needed at the end.
   
   Separate the policy from a short manager checklist and a short employee-facing summary. Do not make decisions about a particular employee. Flag any point that should be checked against the employment contract, current GOV.UK or ACAS guidance, or advice from a UK employment solicitor. State clearly that the employer must apply the policy consistently and make reasonable adjustments where required. Do not describe this as legal advice.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.