Trial-period reviews in Hungary¶

The Hungary - Performance Reviews module adds what Hungarian practice needs on top of the generic application: trial-period (próbaidő) reviews counted from the employment contract, a probation decision record with its own printed Hungarian document, and Hungarian master data to start from.

It contains data and wiring only. Nothing here changes how a review works elsewhere.

How the plan counts from the contract¶

A trial-period review does not count months from an anniversary. It reads the employee’s running employment contract and works backwards from the end of the trial period, so that the decision is prepared while there is still time to take it.

The anchor date of the plan is the contract’s start date. An employee with no running Hungarian contract falls back to the generic anchor.
The decision review falls due Probation Decision Lead Time (days) before the trial period ends — 10 days by default. Set it in Settings ‣ Employees, in the Performance Reviews block. It has to leave enough time to hold the conversation, write the decision and hand it over while the trial period is still running.
Optionally, Probation Checkpoints also plans a short review 30 and 60 days after the employment started, in front of the decision review. It is off by default: whether every probationer is reviewed twice on the way is your decision, not the module’s.

A checkpoint is only planned when it falls before the decision review, so a short trial period does not produce a checkpoint after the decision it was meant to inform. An employee whose contract has no trial period end date has no probation plan at all.

Note

A trial period shorter than the lead time still gets its decision review; it simply falls due on the first day of the employment.

Running a probation cycle¶

Create a cycle of the type Probation, on the Próbaidős értékelés questionnaire, with a population filter that selects the people on trial.
Launch it. Launching a probation cycle creates no review — it puts the cycle into Running, and from then on a daily job creates each review as it falls due.
Make sure Plan Reviews Automatically is on in the company settings. It is the master switch of that job: while it is off, a probation cycle creates nothing at all.

At most one review per employee is created per run, and none while a previous probation review of the same cycle is still open — a checkpoint nobody has answered yet must not be buried under the next one.

Note

Probationers who have no manager on their employee record cannot be reviewed. The cycle’s log records how many were skipped for that reason but never their names, since the log of a cycle is read by more people than the list itself should be.

The probation decision¶

The decision is a record of its own, not a field on the review. It has its own document, its own lock and its own audit trail, because it is the thing that gets handed to a person and may have to be produced years later.

Reach it from the Probation Decision button, or the page of the same name, on a probation review — both visible to an officer — or from Performance ‣ Reviews ‣ Probation Decisions.

Fill in:

Employee and Contract, which bring in Employment Start and End of Trial Period;
Decision Date — the date the decision was taken. It cannot be earlier than the start of the employment it decides about;
Decided By — the person who took the decision, not the person who typed it in;

Decision:

Decision	What it means	What it also requires
Employment confirmed	The trial period ends and the employment continues on unchanged terms.	A Reason, which is printed on the document.
Trial period extended	The trial period is prolonged.	A Reason, and Trial Period Extended To — a date later than the current end of the trial period.
Terminated during the trial period	The employment ends with immediate effect while the trial period runs.	Nothing further. See below.

When the decision is settled, click Lock. A locked decision is the document that was handed over: it can no longer be edited or deleted. Only an officer can unlock it, and the fact is recorded on the decision.

Print produces the Hungarian document.

Important

A trial period may be extended once, and its total length is capped by law and by the applicable collective agreement. The new end date is checked against the contract, but it is never invented for you — check it before the decision is handed over.

Why a termination carries no stated reason¶

This is the part of the module most likely to look like a missing feature, so it is worth being explicit about it.

Under the Hungarian Labour Code, either party may end the employment with immediate effect while the trial period runs, and the law asks the terminating party for no justification. The decision document for a termination therefore records the date, the person who took the decision, and the fact — and nothing else. The Reason field is not rendered on it, and the Indokolás (Reasoning) heading is not printed at all.

That is not squeamishness. A reason that does not have to be given, but is given anyway, becomes a statement the employer has to stand behind. If the termination is later challenged, the employer is no longer defending a lawful trial-period termination that needs no grounds; they are defending the specific grounds they chose to write down, and every weakness in that sentence is now theirs to answer for. The form says so, in a warning shown as soon as Terminated during the trial period is chosen.

You can still record something internally: the Reason field remains, and remains readable by HR. It is an internal note. It never reaches the document.

Warning

An internal note is not a secret. Read Confidentiality on what a subject access request, a labour dispute or a court can bring out. If you would not want to defend a sentence in front of a labour court, do not write it — not in the reason field, and not in a working note.

Confirmations and extensions are the opposite case: both require a reason, and it is printed. Those are decisions the employee is entitled to see the reasoning of.

The printed decision¶

The document is produced in the employee’s own language, falling back to the company’s. For a Hungarian employee it prints entirely in Hungarian: Próbaidős döntés with the employee, job, department, employment start, end of trial period and decision date; then the paragraph for the decision that was taken; then, for a confirmation or an extension only, Indokolás with the reason; then the acknowledgement paragraph, the two signature lines and the place and date.

The paragraph for a termination cites the Labour Code provisions that make the termination lawful without grounds, which is precisely why no grounds appear anywhere else on the page.

Hungarian master data¶

Installing the pack adds ready-made content, so a Hungarian company is not starting from a blank rating scale.

The rating scale¶

Ötfokozatú értékelési skála — a five-level scale, from Nem felel meg az elvárásoknak (1) to Kiemelkedő (5), each level carrying a behavioural description written in Hungarian and an advisory target share. The two lowest levels are marked as below expectation.

Note

The middle level, Megfelel az elvárásoknak, is described as the expected performance and not as a tolerable minimum. That wording is deliberate and it is worth keeping: a scale whose middle rung reads as “adequate, at best” pushes every manager upwards and stops distinguishing anybody.

The questionnaires¶

Four released questionnaires, all in Hungarian:

Questionnaire	For
Éves teljesítményértékelés	The annual review.
Próbaidős értékelés	The trial-period review.
Vezetői visszajelzés	Upward feedback on a manager.
Negyedéves előrehaladás	A short quarterly check-in.

Each was written from Hungarian HR practice and from the obligations of the Labour Code. They are ordinary questionnaires: use them as they are, or use New Version to make them yours.

Company defaults¶

On installation, and only where they are still empty, Hungarian companies get a retention period of 36 months — the limitation period for labour claims — with Ötfokozatú értékelési skála as the default rating scale and Éves teljesítményértékelés as the default questionnaire. Settings you have already made are never overwritten.