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Half of the Employees Financially Impacted by the COVID Crisis

The recent COVID crisis impacted the financial situation of many employees all over Europe. According to a study by the recruitment agency Michael Page, almost 50% of all employees felt the economic consequences of the lockdown, sometimes even positively. 

The most important way people’s financial households were affected by the crisis was that their contract or interim assignment was ended: 48% of the respondents said that the main reason was their contract was terminated. 

That being said, the crisis had a less financial impact on employees in the Netherlands than it did in most European countries. Countries where employees were most affected: Spain (73%), Italy (67%), and Portugal (64%).  

Employees spent less and saved more

Many respondents (24%) said they also spent less during the crisis. One of the reasons was that they decided to save for a possible new crisis in the future. More than 16% of the respondents use that money to save for future crises or to pay off credit card debts.

One of the most obvious ways of saving money is to spend less on travelling. According to the study, more than 66% of the employees decided not to travel because of the COVID crisis, and 10% made that decision for financial reasons.     

The most important reason for not travelling was not financially driven but had to do with the potential impact of a lockdown on the country’s destination or their home country (29%).

Employees invested their free time in training and development

Because of the flexible work schemes, many employees had more time to invest in their professional development. One of the three employees used their time to learn new technical skills, either using an internal training portal or an external provider. The three most important reasons for learning new skills were:

  1. To adapt to new tasks in their current role (60%)
  2. To prepare for a specific future role (50%)    
  3. To be more innovative at work (43.5%)

Working remotely became the new normal

For the majority of the workforce, working remotely became the new normal. Almost 60% of employees have been working from home since the start of the crisis. Companies mainly support their remote workforce by providing office devices, such as laptops, phones, and headsets (63.8%).