Working with Family in Business

The key difference between getting along with your co-workers at a family business as compared to a regular business is you can't always leave business at the office. When you also have to live and spend free time with those same people, after working with them all day, it can be difficult to maintain a positive relationship.

There are many benefits to having a family business and working with your family. I like having the ability to create opportunities for family members. Whether it's hiring a teenager to earn some extra money during summer break, or bringing in a new business school graduate to help run the business, we've done it all over the years. Another benefit is to create wealth and a way to improve the family situation and help it prosper for future generations. That's in the best case scenario. If the business fails, it can also tear the family apart trying to save it. Or they may disagree on when to pull the plug on a failing business.

We have a family real estate and property management business and work daily with both family members and non-family members. Overall, it's been a positive, rewarding experience. There are many factors that go into the relationships. Individual personalities, the nature of the work, the success of the business and more.

A big problem is the amount of time you are spending together, if you also spend time at home. If you have separate home lives and only come together for work, it can work fine, just like any other group of employees. We find many problems develop when you are living and working together. It takes a special kind of relationship to survive and thrive with that much togetherness.

The first key to making it work is to treat it as a business and treat family members as employees not family members or friends. This is especially important when you have a business with both family members and non-family members working together.

If you allow your relatives to come in late or leave early, how can you expect the other employees to take things seriously. How can you expect them to strive for greatness when they know they will always be second string to the family members.

A good manager in a family business is also sensitive to their employees and their goals, whether family members or not. Don't assume all family members want to work for the family business or stay with it forever. Communicate with employees so you know their goals.

In our family business, we had a difficult HR situation a few years ago with a teenage nephew who was working for our property management firm. As part of his duties he would occasionally have to do maintenance or repairs on occupied units. Although he was always with a senior employee, never alone, he managed to steal some items from our tenants. They called the police and it became a big problem, especially when the other, long-time employee was dragged into the situation. We fired him and cooperated fully with the police.

His parents, our relatives, were mad we didn't keep it quiet and help him avoid prosecution. He committed a crime and put our reputation and business on the line. If you are running a business, that must be the priority. He made restitution and after serving time on probation, the charges were dropped. I think he learned and grew from the experience. But the whole thing caused a lot of tension and drama in the family while it was happening.

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