When you’re employed and fall ill, your GP can sign you off work. You get time to recover, and thanks to sick pay and colleagues to cover your workload, life (mostly) carries on.
But what happens if you’re self-employed or running a small business?
The answer: practically nothing.
You might still get signed off by your doctor, but the system offers little more than a piece of paper. There’s no Statutory Sick Pay. No colleague to step in. No safety net. You’re left to balance the very real need to rest and recover with the equally real pressure to keep your business, and your income, alive.
For many self-employed people, being “off sick” simply isn’t an option. It means cancelled contracts, lost clients, and in some cases, a permanent hit to your livelihood. You could follow your GP’s advice and rest, or you could push through illness because the alternative is closing shop – literally.
This is more than just an inconvenience. It’s a structural injustice baked into how our systems treat work. The current approach assumes that everyone fits neatly into a traditional employee model – with a boss, a payroll, and a fallback plan. But the reality is very different for millions of us.
Self-employment isn’t a niche. Microbusinesses, the vast majority of which are run by sole traders or tiny teams, make up over 95% of the UK business population. Yet time and time again, the policies and protections designed to support “workers” ignore them entirely.
Isn’t it time we changed that?
If the government truly wants to back small businesses and the self-employed, it has to start by acknowledging that we get sick too – and that a fit note without financial backup isn’t support, it’s a bureaucratic gesture.
This isn’t about special treatment. It’s about fair treatment.