Freelancers and businesses: #wereinthistogether

Different surveys suggest that almost 50% of the freelancers have dropped without an assignment due to this corona-crisis.

We ran a little survey. The topic of discussion was how we, as freelancers, can help out our customers to cope with this crisis.

To help clients almost 70% of the respondents is willing to cut back on billable days.

Almost 30% is already doing that. This has an immediate positive effect on cost & cash position for businesses.

If work volume drops anyway, this a perfect solution. 
It also demonstrates the flexibility of working with freelance interim and project managers. In a perverse way, one could say it demonstrates that crisis and freelance project management are a match made in heaven.

Almost 50% of the freelancers is willing to temporarily put the assignment/project on hold. Again here, this is an immediate effect on cost & cash. In cases where projects can be stopped this is the ideal solution. In cases where projects keep running (albeit at a slower pace) this might have a negative effect in long-term because of parts of the projects that would have to be done over with extra costs on the longer term. 

Currently, 14% of the freelancers who answered the survey are already doing this. In 20% of these cases, the weeks the assignment or project is put on hold will be delivered once things get back to ‘normal’. Obviously, 90% of the freelancers would like to see the assignment or contract prolonged with the same period as it is put on hold. This to compensate for the loss of income and the hassle of finding a new assignment.

Another solution that was put forward: work now, get paid later (partially or in full). In many cases, this might in fact be the ideal solution. For some projects it would be very unfortunate to put them on hold or even on full-stop (the cost for restarting the project might even be bigger). In circumstances as this, it could be a wise and good solution to have an intermediate solution that works for both parties.

In conclusion, #wereinthistogether! Businesses and freelancers suffer from this crisis. With constructive collaboration and solidarity we will get through this.