Continuum, the Coronavirus and the Black Swan

Continuum, the Coronavirus and our fees.

We know that this is an incredibly difficult time for all our clients.  We are working as hard as we can to support you in order that we can all get through this together.

Where we give general advice or can deal with a query easily, we will continue our policy of not charging fees.

Where more specific and detailed work is required in connection with Coronavirus specific issues, we will reduce our normal time-spent charge-out rates by 50% and also defer the due date for payment on any such work by 90 days.

One area which many of our clients are contacting us about is furloughing staff.  It’s clear that this is a potential employment law minefield and that any hasty decisions or badly implemented policy could create many problems further down the line.  To this end, we are offering a fixed fee service for £295 (+VAT) which would cover furlough advice specific to your situation, and the legal furlough Agreements and support to put this in place including making any claims for you where we operate PAYE payroll for you.  If the Employment law advice on furlough issues that you need falls outside of this area, we will charge on a time-spent basis subject to the above discount and payment terms.

For all our other work we will continue as normal and whilst we would appreciate it if you could pay our fees as normal, we quite understand that this may not be possible.  If necessary, please get in touch to discuss your situation and we will, of course, do all we can work to help.

Together we will get through this!

The Black Swan

All swans are white. Everyone knows that. Or at least everyone did know that. Because no one in Europe had ever seen a black swan. So much so that “as likely as a black swan” was a common phrase. Until 17th century explorers in Australia found black swans.

The phrase ‘a Black Swan event’ was popularised in 2001 by Nassim Taleb, a statistician and risk analyst, to describe an economic event totally unforeseen and unpredictable, which has a massive impact and then is rationalised later with the benefit of hindsight as having been predictable all along.

We seem to be having a Black Swan event at the moment. Situations we thought we would never have to prepare for, things we thought we would never have to do, actions we never took because there would never be a need for them are all now under the spotlight. We are all learning lessons.

Taleb’s message was not that we can predict what the Black Swan event will be but that we should expect that there will be one and should act in business on that basis.

When this crisis is over, and it will be, it will be time to do some ‘Black Swan’ planning. Because we don’t know what the next Black Swan event will be or when it will happen. But we know there will be one.