HOW HAVE self-employed traders coped with the Covid-19 pandemic and Spain's universal shutdown? Research by Granada University sought to find out, and discovered that the answer was far more optimistic than expected.
The Infoautónomos team, a firm which keeps abreast of issues affecting the self-employed and offers online services to sole traders and small business owners – such as invoicing software, legal and tax advice and assistance training and protection equipment - worked closely with the university.
Its CEO, Marcelo Vázquez, said: “As a key organisation for the self-employed community in Spain, we considered it our obligation to 'take the pulse' of the situation and find out the true repercussions that the pandemic has been having on these workers.
“And once more, the results confirm that those who work for themselves are a very unique breed: Faced with circumstances as tough as we've been experiencing, they've yet again managed to reinvent themselves and have restarted their activity with the same energy they had when they were forced to stop.”
The secret to success: Love what you do
A lot of that has to do with the fact they are working in a field they love, says Vázquez.
“The responses to our survey highlight the fact that traders' impetus when picking themselves up and carrying on during times of adversity are largely fuelled by their enjoying what they do, as 54.6% of respondents admitted.”
In total, 55% of self-employed workers, sole traders and small business owners were able to continue their activity during lockdown to some degree or another.
And over 80% said they had 'no fear at all' about returning to 'business as usual'.
The study was carried out over the month of May, targeting a stratified sample of 1,553 traders across the whole country and asking them to answer 120 questions online.
In the words of the two field researchers, Francisco Liébana and Francisco Muñoz: “We were surprised by the level of participation among respondents, given the huge number of questions we were expecting them to answer.
“This alone shows they are a dedicated, conscientious community with plenty of enthusiasm and team spirit.”
Shutting up shop? 97.7% have not had to close for good
In terms of their overall sense of wellbeing in connection with their work, six in 10 say the pandemic has affected them 'very little' or 'not at all'; six in 10 say they have not been left with generalised fear, anxiety or phobias as a result of the health crisis, and two-thirds say they do not expect to need counselling to readjust to opening up again.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com