How to Manage Client Deliverables When You’re Sick
Don’t let illness stress you out as a freelancer.
There are two things that freelancers always wrestle with: taking a vacation and being sick. As a sole resource, it’s not like you’ve got a colleague you can ping for help.
Vacation can usually be finagled with some good planning, but being sick is harder since it’s unplanned. And if you’re doing creative work, it can feel nearly impossible to slog through if you’re ill.
I once had a sinus infection that left me wiped out for days. I had a furious headache, was sleeping poorly, and felt like I was in a fog — all horrible for working as a freelance writer.
Fortunately, it was a time when I had very few deadlines but that easily might not have been the case. As I lay burrowed under a pile of blankets, I wondered what I would have done if deliverables had been looming.
That experience made me realize that I needed to better plan for potential future illnesses so that I wouldn’t face stress on top of being sick.
Communicate as soon as possible
This might seem obvious, but don’t wait to communicate with your clients. Especially if you’re unsure if you’re on the mend or getting worse. It might be tempting to hold off and see how your illness plays out, but you risk running even further behind.
If you feel like you’re under the weather, give your clients a heads up and let them know that you’ll keep them updated.
The tricky part about meetings and deadlines when you’re a freelancer is that they can have a cascading impact: you’ll need to “catch up” somewhere. When I was sick, I kept my client meetings. I use Otter.ai to record all meetings, so even with a foggy head, I had a transcript I could refer to later.
You can also set an expectation with your clients that they shouldn’t expect an immediate response. If you’re feeling slightly ill, but not terrible, you can step back for the day and your clients may not notice. This can only happen if you’ve made clear to your clients that your response times are varied. If you always provide instant communication, it’s harder to lay low for a day.
It’s helpful to maintain a client mailing list. If you’re facing a longer-term illness (or hospitalization), you could send a single email to all of your clients, making them aware of the situation. The mailing list can also come in handy in other emergencies that require a quick contact with all of your clients, rather than sending out the same email over and over.
Prioritize your clients’ needs
If you find that you need to juggle deliverables due to your illness, evaluate which client work takes the highest priority.
This might be based on:
- Your relationship with the client
- How much the project is worth
- Whether the client has any internal or external deadlines that will be impacted
As much as you’re able to, think through the work that must get done versus the work that won’t suffer as much if you need to miss a deadline. You may need to please a new client by delivering as expected and a long-term client might be more understanding of a delay.
If you’re able to deliver some low-lift work, do that so that you can avoid a mountain of catch-up, do that. It might mean doing work for a less important client, but you’re preserving energy for the harder work when you’re feeling better.
Delegate to other freelancers
If you’re really sick and can’t move your deadlines, consider outsourcing the work to other freelancers.
This is usually only possible if you have a solid network of people you trust. You don’t want to risk sending the work to someone you don’t know and creating more work for yourself in fixing any problems or delivering something shoddy to your client.
If you do outsource the work, keep a few things in mind:
- Review your agreement with your client to ensure that nothing prohibits you from outsourcing the work.
- Give the freelancer a due date that leaves you with enough time to review the work before you send it to the client
- Provide the freelancer with some background info on your client and the project
- Offer the freelancer enough money to make the work enticing, even if it means that the work is at-cost for you. You’re paying for a “rush job.”
You’ll want to outline the terms to subcontract in writing. You could prep a subcontractor agreement to have on hand so that you’re not trying also to whip something up when you’re not feeling well. But it should include the scope of the work, the due date, any revisions that might be required (if you’ll handle them or if the other freelancer will), and when/how you’ll pay the subcontractor.
Anna Burgess Yang
Build in some buffer time
One of the biggest challenges of being sick is back-to-back deliverables. Even one or two days of illness can throw you off for a period of time.
The first time I faced illnesses as a freelancer, I cursed my Procrastinating Self for always running my deliverables right up until the deadline. If I’d started earlier, I wouldn’t have been faced with so much remaining work when I was under the weather.
Now, I build in a lot more buffer time. But here’s the catch: even though I may finish work in advance, I don’t deliver it to the client early.
Why? Because I don’t want clients to think that I have a faster turnaround time and can get work done more quickly. If I say that the turnaround is one week, then I deliver it in one week — even if I complete the work in a few days. It has become a natural part of how I manage my time: always work ahead of the deadline rather than right up until the deadline.
That way, I have that buffer for days when I’m sick, my kids are sick, or I’m just feeling off and can’t get the work done.
Clients should be understanding
If you were an employee and you took a few days off because you were sick, work would have to be rearranged. Clients shouldn’t expect any different from freelancers. Yet it’s a sad reality that many do.
If you ask for deadline extensions or other accommodations because you’re sick and the client gives you a hard time, consider dropping the client when you’re able to. The reality is that you’ll be sick again (or have other things come up) in the future and you don’t want to stress yourself out working with the client. Life’s too short to work with difficult people.
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