• Corona , Research
  • 18/09/2020

'How to survive the corona crisis' for entrepreneurs

The development of a new package of entrepreneurial training courses for freelancers and SMEs on dealing with the negative consequences of the corona crisis: this is the aim of a research project at TU Eindhoven. This is led by Evangelia Demerouti, professor of occupational and organizational psychology, who recently received a grant of 200,000 euros from ZonMW. Demerouti: “Entrepreneurs who are struggling right now could secure their businesses with proven, effective training courses.”

by
photo Bart van Overbeeke

The corona crisis and the measures taken are having far-reaching social and economic consequences for small, independent entrepreneurs. Some 400,000 of the 1.2 million freelancers and 650,000 SMEs in the Netherlands have already applied for benefits. This means that their current income has fallen below the social minimum and that they need this financial assistance in order to support themselves.

However, the problems caused by COVID-19 are not limited to the crisis period alone. For many companies, the question is whether or not they will survive the crisis at all. Since the introduction of the aforementioned measures, more than 185,000 entrepreneurs have been granted tax deferrals.

Financial stress

“Many of these entrepreneurs, who experience financial stress and uncertainty, are forced to reorganize their work, and have to survive the corona crisis without the support of an employer,” says Demerouti. With this new project, she wants to investigate the effectiveness of specific strategies in keeping freelancers and SMEs healthy and financially resilient, as well as the role that an online training platform could have in teaching these strategies. These specific strategies are self-insight, insight into the (work) environment, business and network crafting, and creativity.

The research will last two years and the aim is for at least 600 freelancers and SME entrepreneurs to participate. The project consists of three phases. Firstly, it will examine how the strategies contribute to the health and financial resilience of freelancers and SMEs by following them for a few weeks. Demerouti and her team will subsequently develop a training course that supports the effective use of these strategies. Finally, the scalable online training will be tested and offered to a large group of freelancers and SMEs via the organizations FNV Zelfstandigen, ZZP Servicedesk and MKB Eindhoven. The research will be carried out in collaboration with the Knowledge Centre for Psychology and Economic Behaviour of Leiden University and is is funded by ZonMW, a Dutch organization for health research and care innovation.

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