Half of the employees financially impacted by the COVID crisis

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

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

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

Employees spent less and saved more

Many respondents (24%) said they also have spent less during the crisis. One of the reasons was that they decided to save for a possible new crisis in the future. A little bit more than 16% of the responded uses that money to save for future crisis or to pay off credit card debts.

One of the most obvious ways of saving money was to spend less on traveling. 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 traveling was not financially driven but had to do with the potential impact of a lockdown the country 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, such as Earnlight or Udemy. The 3 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 has been working from home since the start of the crisis. Companies mostly support their remote workforce by providing office devices, such as laptops, phones and headsets (63.8%).

About the survey

Michael Page surveyed 412 job applicants through our website over a month, to try and understand the affect the recent crisis had on their personal and professional lives, the support they got from their company, what they did to make the best of the situation. 

Find out more insights about the labour market here