How are BETs and consulting engineers adapting to the context of the health and economic crisis?

The consequences of the 10-month crisis are still having a severe impact on CINOV members and nearly half of them report declining turnover. But faced with the difficulties, the VSE SMEs of the BETIC branch have shown a great capacity for adaptation to limit the impact on employment and recourse to partial unemployment.

A crisis that continues to impact companies in the BETIC branch ...

For almost a year now, the COVID-19 crisis has hit businesses hard, especially VSEs, SMEs and the self-employed. The persistent impact of the crisis, reinforced by the second autumnal wave, continues to influence the health of companies in the branch, nearly half of which still report a drop in turnover for this month of December compared to the last year. If this figure is slightly improved compared to the statistics for November (-9 points); for a quarter of them, this decrease amounts to more than 50% of their turnover.

At the end of the year, the sectors of architecture and urban planning (27%), digital (23%) and management consulting (17%) are the most affected. Unsurprisingly, companies whose main customer sector is aeronautics, the automobile industry, retail distribution and even the hotel industry are the most affected.

... whose future remains uncertain

The persistence of the crisis context, both health and economic, is slowing down the recovery in business activity and impacting their forecasts for the coming months. Thus, half of the respondents predict a further drop in turnover for the next three months and for 8% of them, this prediction amounts to more than 50% of turnover (stable figure since October) . Among the sectors of the branch that are the most pessimistic about the future are: architecture and town planning (63%), management consulting (65%), Industries and Technologies (66%) and Restauconception (100 %). If cash management, reducing or renegotiating hours are also cited by members, for 61% of the companies questioned, the unpredictability of the activity remains the most important difficulty in their activity at the present time.

Adaptation skills that help preserve employment in the sector

Despite these alarming figures, the month of December shows signs of a slow recovery, as the number of companies with declining turnover fell by 9 points compared to November. Similarly for the impact on employment, recourse to a reduction in the workforce is no longer considered by 9% of respondents against 13% last month. This recovery can be explained in particular by the great adaptability of the companies in the branch which - among those which have had recourse to teleworking - 90% have made available to their employees dedicated equipment (IT, software, access to distance ...) and 50% to have covered the teleworking costs of their employees. We also note that company agreements on the implementation of teleworking are developing (+6 points compared to November).

“The economic health of our VSE SMEs has not been spared by this long-term health and economic crisis. Fall in activity, new working methods: our members have had to and have been able to deal with the challenges that the situation has imposed on them. CINOV will continue in 2021 to support them in all their efforts to facilitate the long-term recovery of their activity, in order to make this year one of resilience and digital and environmental transformations. "
Frédéric Lafage, President of the CINOV Federation