I am just wondering if the 3 month probation period can be extended if the the employee has attended work every day without any sick leave. And if so, does the employer require an amendment to the contract with new signatures? Or is an email accepting the probation extension enough?

An E-mail is enough, a written letter is normal.

Maybe your company is not doing too well, and they want to be able to get rid of you quickly, with shorter notice? Maybe you should discreetly start looking for a new job?

Hi

You can always refuse but then be prepared to be sacked pretty quickly.

If you accept then e-mail would probably be ok, albeit not very professional.

The main question is why they would want to prolong the period. It can be either because of your performance (sorry but attending work is not enough, one expects more of employees-), or because the company is not in good shape / looking to announce redundancies.

It would favour the second hypothesis given the state of the economy.

My friendly advice: 1. Sign the prolongation 2. immediately look for another job.

Good luck!

That was sort of the point I was going to make, too. What should it matter if in three months you did or did not take any sick time? It proves nothing about one's ability to do a job.

People get sick. It's a fact of life. None of us can control when and how we become ill. We can control whether or not we take our germs and our sour attitudes into the office and affect our coworkers though.

If you're sick stay home. You have nothing to prove by coming in to the officer other than you're a work-a-holic.

As for the probationary period, if they want to extend it, then you should find out WHY before agreeing to an extension and ensure that there are very clear terms as to what the expectations are to be measured. If there are questions about your performance during the first 3 months and they cannot determine "yes" or "no" to keep you so they'd like to evaluate further, then there must be some sort of feedback forthcoming that you should be made aware of. If you decline to extend the probation then you may as well start looking for a new job.

Thanks for the info. I was just wondering as I read that probation can only be a maximum of 3 months unless the employee has been sick. Therefore, if the employee hasn't been sick he should either be let go kept on as a normal employee , no?

So far as I understand it, you are correct. The following sources state that the probationary period can be extended to a maximum of 3 months per contract, and it is illegal to try to get around that by creating a new contract or such.

http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/hinter..._1.293881.html

http://www.kmu.admin.ch/themen/00208...x.html?lang=de