I've blogged in the past about how difficult it can be to take 'time off' as a sole trader/freelancer - something that various studies also highlight:
- 1 in 4 of us aren't able to take any holiday at all, and of those of us that are able to, about half have to take work with them;
- and this isn't because we're all greedily trying to cash in, or we're workaholics, but because unlike our counterparts in salaried employment, we're not entitled to the nearly 6 weeks paid time off that they can claim for holidays. If we take time off, we get no pay;
- and all of this is further compounded by my also being one of the nearly 500,000 self-employed/sole traders who are also unpaid carers, and so already earning less money than those that aren't...
So it was with mixed emotions that I prepared to be away for a week with my wife recently - roving around caves, forests, and fields in Devon and Cornwall. And as this has been the first time we've been able to take a holiday together for about 5 years, was 'quite important'.
In recognising this, I made effort to contact various clients, project managers, associates, etc in advance, to alert them to my being away - partly to help manage expectations, and also to try and best protect this time away.
Most people I contacted acknowledged and wished us both a restful and enjoyable time. A mark of the respect and strength of relationship I'd built with them. Or so I thought...
While I was away, I had to respond to no less than 13 arising issues, all from different bodies, people, and groups whom I'd already informed of my being 'out of office'*. These ranged from local groups, to collaborators with whom I'm working on joint projects with, to infrastructure and national sector bodies.
And none of these messages referenced the senders' awareness that I was taking a holiday at the time they were sending them, nor that they were able/happy to wait until my return - in fact, nearly all needed responses urgently (so a good job that I was able to wander around early in the mornings before my wife rose for our adventures of the day, to find signals for my phone and quickly send acknowledgements, replies, and clarifications to nearly all of them).
Now, the above could be read as an encouragement that I'm fortunate to have these relationships and work at all, but it's also been said that a mark of respect is how far people will act in ways you ask them to - and in light of the above, I can't help but start to wonder how far my experience is illustrative of either people not being respectful of me, or it's a wider issue about freelancers and sole traders in general not being respected?
My hope in sharing this 'rant' isn't to shame any of the above (after all, there are always at least 5 sides to every story, and we'll never be aware of most of them), but to try and open up opportunities for conversations with others to test the above question: is it easier to have your holiday protected and uninterrupted if you're employed (and so have legal rights and protections for your time off), or are freelancers and consultants not thought of as being equally valued in how they're treated by clients in comparison with how said clients would treat their employed staff for the same circumstance (taking holiday)?
If it's the former, then it's another sign of how unjust the law is in treating the self-employed as a lower class of people in not recognising or affording them the same protections and rights as people in other forms of employment are entitled to. And subsequently, the damage this is doing to the 4.3 million of us in the UK who work in this way.
* Yes, dear reader, I could have simply ignored them all until I got back to civilisation - but to do so, would have meant a higher level of stress on my return when I opened the inbox to find torrents of conversation threads marked urgent and whose deadlines had already passed and therefore my needing to get involved in dealing with the unexpected 'fallout' from these (and which would have further compounded our coming home to find the bathroom leaking into the hallway...) - thus negating all of the benefits of taking time away.
Links -
https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/article/holiday-when-self-employed-get-away-with-getting-away
https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2023/05/can-i-get-self-employed-holiday-pay/
https://thirdsectorexpert.blogspot.com/2023/06/being-all-things-to-all-people.html
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