An F-Shaped recovery – How Freelancers are powering Britain’s brilliant bounce-back
This wasn’t just any ordinary crisis – the financial hit the UK has taken from COVID-19 has been shorter, sharper, and deeper than any we’ve seen before. According to the Resolution Foundation, the mere seven working days of lockdown in the first three months of 2020 gave the UK it’s biggest quarterly economic contraction since the financial crisis.
But the country is now starting to show signs of recovery. In fact, recent stats from both the PMI and ONS retail sales data show the UK economy may be bouncing back much faster than anyone could possibly have expected.
There are lots of reasons for this. Government intervention in furloughing millions of workers is clearly a major factor.
But it’s also true that many of the UK’s businesses deployed digital freelancers in interesting ways to help them through this crisis. And the impact of this dynamic new way of thinking may have had a big impact on productivity.
Fiverr partnered with Censuswide to survey 1,000 SME leaders at the height of lockdown and find out how this crucial segment of the economy was coping. The data found correlations across different UK cities showing those who pivoted quickly to use more freelance talent were able to reap a variety of unexpected benefits.
Businesses in cities like Birmingham, Bristol, and Manchester were among those most likely to have turned to on-demand talent. These also tend to be the cities that have seen the biggest increases in productivity.
The data also found further correlations between how prepared businesses felt for the crisis, and how optimistic they feel about the future.
At one end of the scale are places like Cardiff and Newcastle, where businesses were unprepared, were unable or unwilling to unlock freelance talent, and now feel less optimistic about the future.
And at the other end of the scale the opposite is true – here businesses in places like Manchester and Bristol felt more prepared, turned on freelance help at high rates, and now feel much more optimistic about what lies ahead. Their productivity tends to be higher, too.
So, could it be that freelancers are the simple solution to all our lockdown woes?
Of course not. As any entrepreneur will tell you, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to fix every business. Tough times require creative problem solving and complex solutions.
In fact, many employers in our study found they felt closer to their regular staff during lockdown.
And some cities bucked the trend – like Exeter, for example, who were very optimistic about the future, despite low productivity.
The key factor that does seem to run through all of this, though, is adaptability.
Most entrepreneurs will tell you that the ability to adapt to changing circumstances is key to success. In fact, data suggests a high proportion of SMEs see flexibility and agility as their greatest asset.
And what many businesses appear to have done well is to move their offline businesses online – in new and interesting ways.
This switch has taken many forms. Take the pub in Staffordshire that became an on-demand cocktail delivery service. Or the co-working space in Brixton that devised a smart click-and-collect food service.
It’s these areas that freelance staff are making the biggest impact.
Moving into a completely new field, many businesses may find themselves without the talent to implement new ideas – a problem compounded by the fact that they don’t want to make any new hires in such challenging times.
The option to bring in a reasonably-priced web developer – who you don’t have to meet in-person – could be a real game-changer in such circumstances.
And – for many of the businesses we speak to every day – it was. On-demand graphic design, or SEO, or social media management – or any other niche digital skill – allows SMEs to pivot quickly, without having to bet the house on a new, unexplored revenue stream.
The fact that UK SMEs seem to be bouncing back so quickly shows that Britain’s famously swashbuckling entrepreneurs are solving problems and learning to win in this new normal.
And there are millions of online freelancers helping them to succeed.
Liron Smadja, Director Local Marketing, Fiverr