Self-employed workers made 'keener and stronger' by pandemic

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.

On the contrary: 48% claim to feel 'better prepared than before' for dealing with what the future holds.

Whilst 55.3% were able to continue with their business activity – even in a reduced format, such as bars and restaurants offering food deliveries and shops taking online orders – 42.4% said they had to close down 'temporarily', but did not need to de-register from the Social Security or the tax office, as is the case when stopping trade altogether.

Only 2.3% had to close their businesses for good or, at least, for the foreseeable future with a view to restarting, but taking themselves 'out of the system' in the meantime.

Traders get inventive to bring customers back

An estimated third of Spain's workforce is self-employed, and over 70% of businesses are small or medium-sized, usually family-run, entities – so it perhaps comes as little surprise that the country holds the European record for the most bars and restaurants per inhabitant.

Many of these have described strategies they have invented for coping with loss of trade during lockdown and schemes for bringing customers back.

A handful of eateries in Almería revealed they were offering home-cooked dishes as takeaways, were engaging more with customers on social media, and running competitions on Facebook with a free home-delivered meal for the winner.

Another scheme throughout the city has involved 'money off' coupons which customers can buy online at a reduced rate, so that now the bars and restaurants have reopened, some of the clientèle has already paid for its drinks and meals in advance and can simply pop in and cash in their tokens.

Some bars nationwide, which did not normally serve food beyond small snacks, even advertised takeaway coffee.

As well as providing an incentive, this scheme has helped cashflow during the shutdown.

Shops across the country have launched similar programmes and offers to attract customers back to them – in many cases, the entire retail community in a town has banded together to pool ideas and funds and launch joint campaigns.

In Pego (northern Alicante province), a town of around 11,000 inhabitants of whom around 15% are retired European expats, a questionnaire was launched asking customers what they most liked and most wanted to see when shopping, covering everything from product range to opening hours – and everyone who responded was given a free 'Covid-19 safety kit' with masks, gloves, hand-sanitiser and a reusable tote bag.

The shopkeepers' association ordered 500 packs, each worth €25, and had to file the same order again within two days when every single one had been snapped up.

In the province of Valencia, the inland town of Xàtiva – famous for its castle, for being the 'birthplace' of the paper industry and for being one of the homes of the infamous Borgia dynasty – launched an online voucher scheme.

Customers would purchase €40 vouchers for €20 each and redeem these in Xàtiva's shops – effectively getting everything for half price, and again, paying before they bought, meaning the actual moment of 'purchase' felt like getting a 'free gift'.