Probation, confirmation, and extensions

Probation, confirmation, and extension are employment-stage events after someone has already joined. They are not onboarding. The join path from accepted offer to an activated employee stays on Dayzen onboarding. Why join-path work is a different object from later employment events stays on employee lifecycle versus onboarding. This page owns the operational distinction: a written stage with a review date, a dated confirmation, or a dated later review. Product surface: Dayzen employee lifecycle, which includes intern, probation, and active contract workspaces. Lengths are policy and contract. This page does not state a nationwide Indian labour-law duration. It is not legal advice. It is not a performance-appraisal product.

If your handbook is still a draft, treat durations and approval names as SME-gated until an issued version exists. Do not copy a neighbour company’s three-month folklore into the HRMS and call it statute.

Three words that are not synonyms

Probation is a written employment stage after joining. The record should show that the person is on probation terms, when that stage started (usually joining or a contract start), and when you intend to review. Review date is a diary fact. It is not confirmation. Silence on the review date is not confirmation either.

Confirmation is a dated decision that the probation stage ended and the person continues on confirmed terms you actually use — often “active” or confirmed employment in your classification. Confirmation has an approver, a date the decision was taken, and an effective date if those two differ. A congratulatory chat is not confirmation.

Extension is a dated decision that the review is later than the original review date, with a new review date written down. Extension is not “we were busy.” Extension is not leaving the person in a probation workspace forever because nobody clicked. If you will not confirm and will not extend, that is a different event (end of employment under your process) — not an unnamed fourth state called “pending vibe.”

Intern is a different workspace and a different article. Do not treat internships as informal probation. Convert or end intern terms on their own path; do not silently relabel an intern as probationer in a comment.

Not onboarding, not appraisal software

Onboarding activates the employee and collects joining facts. A person can be fully active for attendance and payroll and still be on probation. Mixing the two produces two bugs: HR delays activation “until probation is over,” which starves payroll and access, or HR treats day-one orientation as the probation review, which never writes a confirmation date. Lifecycle versus onboarding exists so you do not merge those objects. Use onboarding for join. Use this page for the stage after join.

A probation review may use manager notes. That does not make Dayzen a performance-appraisal or OKR product. Do not describe this workflow as PMS. Capture the employment decision (confirm, extend, or end) on the lifecycle record. Keep appraisal methodology, rating scales, and goal cycles off this page. If managers write a paragraph, file it as the reason on the event, not as a second product category.

What the record must hold

For someone on probation:

• Employment classification or contract workspace: probation, as you actually name it.
• Stage start date.
• Intended review date (and who owns the diary).
• Terms that differ from confirmed employment, if any — notice, benefits eligibility, or letter language you already issued. Do not invent statutory differences this page cannot certify.

For confirmation:

• Decision date and effective date.
• Approver role (manager, HR, both — as issued).
• The workspace or status after the event (active / confirmed, in your language).
• Whether pay, role, or benefits change on confirmation. If they do, that change is a contract event with an effective date — see future-dated processing on the sibling mechanics article, not a silent spreadsheet.

For extension:

• Original review date that did not produce confirmation.
• New review date.
• Reason category your policy allows (more time on a skill, delayed manager, documented gap) — not a novel of grievances.
• Approver, decision date, and whether any terms change during the extra period.

Dayzen’s intern, probation, and active contract workspaces are the buckets those facts sit in. Moving someone between workspaces is an event, not a display theme. If the directory still says probation after you confirmed, payroll and letters will follow the directory. Fix the record.

Policy length is not a national constant

Organisations pick probation length in appointment letters and handbooks: three months, six months, a year, or something else. Some roles differ from others. This page will not tell you what Indian law “usually” is. If a statute, standing order, or contract constraint applies to your entity, your counsel and the issued letter own that — not a blog duration. Operationally: the length you issued is the length the review diary must use. Changing the length for one person is an extension or a letter revision, not a quiet calendar drag.

Do not write “probation cannot exceed X days in India” here. Do not write that confirmation is automatic when the calendar passes. Automatic confirmation is a policy choice you would have to implement as a dated event. Calendar expiry without an event is an audit hole: the person is still in the probation workspace, or worse, people assume they are confirmed when the HRMS still says otherwise.

Who decides, and by when

Name the decision maker before the review week. Manager recommends, HR records, and a second approver signs if your letter says so. Parallel informal yeses are how one person is confirmed in email and still probation in the system.

Work the diary backward from the review date: reminder to the manager, reminder to HR, and a freeze on “we’ll see after the festival.” If the manager is on leave, delegate. An extension caused only by an unread inbox is still an extension — write it, or confirm without pretending the delay did not happen.

Employees should be able to see the stage they are on without guessing. If self-service shows employment type, it should match the workspace. A congratulations mail that never hits the record is how someone asks for confirmed-employee benefits you have not granted.

Letters and payroll follow the event

If you issue a confirmation letter, generate it from the event facts: name, role, effective date. Dayzen lifecycle includes employment letter templates. Tokens are not a legal clause library. If confirmation changes CTC or designation, those fields must be on the event so payroll does not wait for a forwarded PDF. Dayzen payroll calculates from the employee structure; it does not invent confirmation. If the structure should change on the confirmation effective date, that is a dated contract change, not a mid-cycle surprise in the payslip notes.

Proration and mid-month events are payroll mechanics owned elsewhere. Here you only require that confirmation’s effective date is the date payroll should honour, not the date someone remembered to type.

Failure modes

Symptom	What actually happened	Fix
Still “probation” after a party	Chat congratulations, no event	Record confirmation with dates; then letters
Review date passed, no click	Silence treated as maybe	Confirm, extend with a new date, or start exit process
Activation delayed for months	Onboarding confused with probation	Activate on join path; keep probation as stage
Pay changed, type did not	Spreadsheet increment, workspace stale	One event: type plus pay, or two dated events
Extension folklore	“Everyone gets another three months”	Issue policy; record each extension
Appraisal theatre	OKR tool treated as confirmation	Employment decision on lifecycle, not a score

Ending probation without confirmation

If the decision is not to continue, that is an employment-end event under your issued process: notice, LWD, and last-week ops as you run them. Do not leave the person in probation as a polite substitute for exit. Do not use “extension” to avoid a termination conversation you have already decided. This page does not advise on fairness or statute. It requires that the record matches the decision you actually took.

A diary you can run

1. On join, set probation workspace, stage start, and review date from the letter you issued — not from memory.
2. Mid-stage, manager checkpoint as your policy asks; still not confirmation.
3. Before review date, HR chase and a named approver.
4. On decision: confirmation event, extension event with new date, or exit trigger.
5. Letters and any pay/role change on the same facts.
6. Directory and self-service match the workspace.

Probation is a stage with a review date. Confirmation is a dated yes. Extension is a dated later review. None of those is onboarding, and none is a nationwide legal length. Dayzen holds intern, probation, and active workspaces. Write the event. Do not wait for the calendar to invent a status.

Keep onboarding for hire-to-activate. Keep lifecycle versus onboarding for the seam between join and later events. Keep this page for the three words and the diary. When confirmation also changes role or pay, record those as employment events with effective dates — the raise and promotion article owns event types; future-dated processing owns “not yet.” Stop here so you do not write a second appraisal methodology or a fake labour-code duration into an HR operations post.