Terminating employment during the probation period

Many employers believe that if they terminate an employee during the employee's probation period, they will be protected from any claim. This is not necessarily correct, for two reasons I have outlined below:

Probation and the "minimum employment period"

For an employee to be able to bring an unfair dismissal claim under the Fair Work Act, they must have worked the "minimum employment period", which is 12-months for small business employers (those with 14 or fewer employees), or six-months for other employers. Therefore, if employment is terminated after six-months (or 12-months in the case of a small business employer), but still within a longer probation period, they will still be able to bring a claim for unfair dismissal, because they will have been employed for the minimum employment period.