Can I fail my probation for overworking?

[silversable]

Hi everyone.
I only just started a new job in January and am really enjoying it. Recently, almost everyone has been furloughed due to the pandemic with only 2 writers left (I work in digital marketing). I have been putting more hours in this month, as the schedule has got much tighter, I am doing 2 of almost everything I was doing before, plus other things. The hr adviser at my work has seen how many hours I have been doing (so many over), and said she needs to chat to me tomorrow as she thinks I'm doing too much and my work load isn't right. I'm so worried this will mean they think I'm not good enough and have to work loads to catch up. Can you be fired for overworking? Thing is I know I can do the work without doing so many hours, I was just stressing about it all being perfect and paranoid they would furlough me if things weren't great.

Well the bad news is that at this point in your employment you can be instantly dismissed for pretty much any reason, even a totally unfair one, because they think you are working too hard, not hard enough, they don't think you fit in, they think you are too popular, they don't like the colour of your jumper, anything really. The only things that are not allowed at this point are discriminatory reasons and a very limited number of other reasons. They don't even have to wait until the end of your probation or give you a warning first - that's just a feature of employment law in England/Wales I'm afraid.

The good news is that I highly doubt that you are about to get fired for working too hard and think it's more likely that the HR person wants to talk to you for exactly the reason she says, that you seem a bit stressed and overworked and she is concerned about you. I know HR people are usually regarded as both evil and incompetent on here (and to be fair sometimes its justified ) but (a) we don't usually go around nosing into people's work purely looking for excuses to fire people that are doing a good job and whose managers are happy with them - aside from everything else that just creates work for ourselves (!) and (b) we don't 'trick' people by saying we want to talk about their wellbeing and then spring a sudden sacking on them - usually if it was that kind of meeting she'd have said something more oblique like 'we need to talk about your probation/contract/performance' or just called you to a meeting with no warning or explanation at all. Believe it or not there are plenty of HR people out there than genuinely do care about staff wellbeing and at the moment monitoring working hours, workload and stress of our employees is a big deal at my workplace anyway.

So I would try not to panic, stay calm and professional and give her a chance, although she may not actually have much power to do anything if your workload is too high (usually HR people can't just magic more staff or less work out of thin air so all that can be done is signpost you to sources of support). Don't give her the impression you aren't coping if you can help it, but explain as you have above that you are keen to make a good impression and do a good job hence working a bit extra but are able to do everything you need to in your contracted hours.

Good luck!