Self-employed people have to leave healthcare organization Buurtzorg Nederland: ‘So many changing employees are not in the interest of patients’
The number of self-employed people without employees has been hard in recent years, according to figures from Statistics Netherlands. The government wants to limit this. Healthcare institution Buurtzorg does not wait for this to happen: “Hiring self-employed persons is not in the interest of patients.”
The number of self-employed persons without staff in the healthcare sector has been consumed considerably in recent years. With new rules, the government wants to reduce self-employment and ensure that paid employment becomes the norm again. Home care organization Buurtzorg is not waiting for those new rules.
Different people on the floor
Buurtzorg has small home care teams spread throughout the country and makes relatively little use of freelancers. Buurtzorg owner Jos de Blok wants to reduce this even further. According to him, it goes against the principle of good care and the continuity of the roosters is endangered if too many self-employed people are employed.
De Blok: “Zzp’ers must have different seen clients. So they work here one time and there the other time. So there is not much continuity. It is in the interest of a customer that there are as few different people as possible about the floor, because that is very stressful for people.”
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Hiring duration
Also, according to De Blok, self-employed people are at odds with the starting point of care: “You work with small companies. Self-employed people have an interest in working hours. Then you simply have more services. If you also get a good rate there, per hour, your income goes up.”
The money spent on hiring healthcare workers has been difficult to confirm in recent years, it appears research from accountancy firm BDO. “I think that the problems in the labor market are being abused,” says De Blok. “In several places there are nurses who were first employed and are now hired for double. That is not in the interest of patients.”
The number of salaried employees is going down
Figures from Statistics Netherlands showed that the number of self-employed persons in the Netherlands is calculated hard. Last year, the Netherlands had more than 1 million self-employed persons without employees. Meanwhile, the counter is at 1.2 million self-employed. Its history was the greatest in the care and welfare professions.
The number of self-employed persons increased, especially among social workers, housing supervisors, psychologists and medical specialists. A total of 34,000 care self-employed persons were added last year. That will cost ten of a salaried healthcare worker. That number actually fell by 13,000.
Disability insurance and embedding principle
The government wants to reduce self-employment, particularly in healthcare and education. In this way, the self-employment deduction is phased out. Disability insurance should also become compulsory, which can also become a considerable cost item for self-employed persons without employees.
Employers are also discouraged from taking on freelancers due to the mature embedding principle. If a certain task takes a long time and belongs to the company’s core product, salaried employment becomes the legal norm. A company must come up with good results why a self-employed person may be hired.
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Outflow from care
Interest group Vereniging Self-Employed Netherlands (VZN) fears that self-employed persons will turn their back on care if the rules become stronger. Chairman Cristel van de Ven: “The plans that are now in place are really going to draw a line through the bill for many self-employed people. Classic one-pit companies such as hairdressers or contractors in particular are affected, while nothing has changed to change anything.”
VZN understands that more rules are needed for the self-employed when it comes to uncertainties and pension accrual, but Van de Ven fears for continuity in care and education if self-employed are restricted. “People who have entered the care of education as a self-employed person will flee the profession if they have to be employed.”
Freelancer in outpatient youth care
Priscilla from de Bulten worked for more than 10 years as an employee in outpatient youth care. She has been working as a self-employed person in Zwolle for 3 years: “I understand that I could no longer grow within the organization where I was at the time. I did not want to lead. I heard from others that she worked as a self-employed person and that appealed to me at .”
The choice coincides with having a child. “We got our little man 1 year ago and I just think it’s important that I don’t work every day. With a client, the upbringing of the little one can be combined well.”
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Put money aside
Priscilla would no longer want to return to paid employment: “In the place where I am now, they have already offered me that several times. But as a self-employed person I have more freedom to say: ‘I don’t work today, I don’t work the weekends, I don’t work the holidays.’ And I think that’s very important.”
She contradicts that being self-employed is a goldmine: “I always find that very easy. I have to save for my own pension. I take care of my own insurance. I have to set aside a pot myself. If you are pregnant, lie you’ll figure it out. I’ll have to pay for that myself.”
Fewer managers
Jos de Blok is not afraid to lose healthcare workers by being self-employed. “I think being self-employed is an expression of dissatisfaction with working conditions in many places. So we have to do something about those conditions.”
Buurtzorg prides itself on working with self-managing teams, without management strokes. According to De Blok, this contributes to the job satisfaction of the staff: “If we organized the healthcare organizations differently, the staffing problem would also be much smaller.”