Good physical and mental health are often attributes we take for granted until they desert us. Whether you’re struck down with flu, struggling with anxiety or depression, nursing broken bones or recovering from surgery, there will be many instances in your career where working simply isn’t practical or feasible.
In the public sector, where six months of full sick leave can be followed by six months of half-pay, long-term absenteeism may be financially inconsequential. Yet for sole traders, company directors and freelancing second-jobbers, a period of ill health could be catastrophic. Today’s freelance jobs market is absolutely brutal, and companies have no legal responsibility to wait for an external contractor to regain their fitness. Yet for the contractors themselves, the loss of a key client might be financially ruinous, especially if they haven’t been able to sufficiently diversify their client portfolio.
Dependent on the goodwill of companies you’re not employed by, and at the mercy of your own body’s powers of recuperation, coping with illness as a freelancer can be traumatic. Having been a full-time freelancer since 2010, I’ve worked (or tried to work) through labyrinthitis, gastroenteritis, a broken foot, the opioid-addled days following major surgery and three bouts of COVID. And despite all that, I’ve been lucky not to endure more debilitating or long-term conditions. The following advice is therefore based on 15 years of first-hand experience and best practice…
Six tips for coping with illness
Clients rarely accept a significant drop-off in the quality of freelance contributions, though any reasonable human being will accept short-term delays or rescheduling if there’s a genuine reason behind it. Quality always outweighs quantity. My first tip for anyone worried about coping with illness is therefore to maintain cordial relations with your clients wherever possible, since this goes a long way to justifying deadline extension requests or apologies for not being able to take on new work temporarily. If clients know you’re normally reliable, they’ll be more likely to cut you some slack when you need it, especially if they know the quality of your work won’t suffer.
My second tip expands on the first – don’t be afraid to mention your personal life. I’m not suggesting regaling clients with tales of your varicose veins, or explaining why stout makes you retch, but a few insights into daily life help to paint a picture of your circumstances. If a client knows you have caring responsibilities, they’ll be less surprised if you cancel a meeting at short notice; if they know you’ve got kids, they’ll be more sympathetic if you suddenly ask to work from home due to an outbreak of chickenpox/nits/flu/school phobia.
You can’t always predict when illness will strike, but working as far in advance as possible helps to cushion sudden enforced absences. If you can, build up a stockpile of work to draw upon, it’ll give you some valuable breathing space. I work two weeks in advance with one regular client, so if I woke up one Monday morning unable to work, that Friday’s submissions were written the previous week and would be ready to submit, giving me almost a fortnight before I needed to produce new content to avoid missing a deadline. With another client, I keep two articles on standby in case of emergencies, formatted and ready to submit if I’m suddenly indisposed.
There are often ways to minimise the impact of illness, particularly the viral kind. My next tip is to bolster your immune system through a combination of multivitamins, First Defence spray, elderberry syrup and over-the-counter painkillers. Taken in combination at the first sign of a cold, they often prevent its onset, and they’ll typically knock days off the recovery period for existing infections. Obviously, this tip doesn’t apply to broken bones or mental health issues, but I’d highly recommend it as a way of fighting off colds and flu, which can be hugely debilitating in the short-term.
If your issue can’t be cured with a trip to the local chemist, and it’s likely to impact on your availability or productivity, be open and honest about it. Explain what’s happening, what you’re doing about it and when you hope to be back at full capacity. Don’t try to cover up one issue by inventing another – clients can often see through this – and don’t downplay the severity of something you’re really struggling with. Account managers will also have children/mental health concerns/poorly relatives/an imperfect immune system, and they’ve probably been where you are right now. Apologise, explain, reassure and trust in their decency. If they lay you off for an acute illness or short-term health issue, their income might be missed but you really are better off not working with such people.
Finally, some companies offer insurance against a loss of freelance income. My last tip is to investigate insuring your freelance business against personal injury or an inability to work. Premiums and policies will vary hugely depending on your industry, skills and client base, but it’s worth running an internet search for freelance income insurance. If nothing else, having a policy in place will provide extra peace of mind next time someone sneezes on you in the supermarket, or you decide to visit a trampoline park…