10/ 02/ 2007
by Charles R. McConnell
Working with family members can be everything from pleasant, productive and rewarding to divisive, frustrating and decidedly unpleasant. The proximity driven by work can bring family members closer together in satisfying relationships, but it can also create stressors that foster hard feelings and drive people apart. All is dependent on the personalities of the individuals involved, their understanding of their roles and their willingness to accept them, and the prevailing style of management. In this article, we'll address working with family in two contexts: the family-owned and operated business, and the employment of relatives in a business that is not family-operated.
As far as the family-owned-and-operated business is concerned, it's not possible to say with absolute certainty whether working with family members in day-to-day activities holds more advantages than disadvantages or vice versa; it can go either way depending on a number of factors, including the following:
- How much potential is there for competition among family members and is it likely to be healthy or unhealthy competition? When there are more ambitious family members than there are good positions or there's a limited amount of recognition and reward to go around, the potential for trouble is present. For example, in one particular company, the competition between two brothers who were both after the same position became so intense that eventually each was spending an increasing amount of time and energy trying to elevate himself, often at the other's expense. Only one could have what they both wanted, practically ensuring that one would become a resentful “loser” who felt the other was unfairly favored.
- Family members will know each other much better than people who are together for work only. This can be good or bad; one can know the whole person including his strengths, capabilities, interests better while also being biased by knowledge of personal characteristics (shyness, excess ambition or lack of ambition, etc.).
- Work-related problems can be taken home, where differences arising on the job can continue. Also, home-related problems can readily be taken to work when people who live together work together as well.
- Some people (like spouses, for example) who are together for much of their off-work time as well as every workday experience problems related to overexposure of each to the other. Depending on personality and temperament, this constant togetherness can either be strength or weakness.
For the family-owned-and-operated company to do business successfully and with minimal internal stress, it's essential that:
- Everyone involved, whether family members or others, understands his role completely and knows who does what, the boundaries of everyone's authority and who wields the ultimate authority when disagreements arise.
- Favoritism—even the perception of favoritism—be avoided at all times.
- Everyone involved, whether family members or others, be subject to the same rules and policies and equal treatment. This is especially important where disciplinary issues are concerned.
The family-owned and operated business can often be a poor employment choice for a non-family-member because of the perception—and often reality—of strictly limited opportunity. Sometimes a family member will advance over a non-family member who may be more deserving or better qualified. Consider the company in which individuals of three generations held the firm's three key positions in order of longevity. This situation didn't offer much of a future with this company for two non-family low-level supervisors, especially with two more third-generation family members working at the same level.
As for businesses in which people related to each other might be employed: by policy, many companies forbid the hiring of relatives of employees in any capacity. Some firms permit the hiring of relatives, as long as people related to each other aren't placed in the same department or chain of command.
Prohibitions like these may be broader when certain functions having across-the-board influence, such as top management or human resources, are involved. It's often forbidden for relatives of people in these functions to be employed anywhere in the company because of the potential for influence—real or perceived—on how they are handled. For example, what manager wouldn't feel at least somewhat uneasy about initiating deserved disciplinary action against the CEO's son or the human resources director's sister?
The majority of employers who permit the hiring of relatives also forbid the placement of relatives in a superior-subordinate relationship. This sort of arrangement can be deadly. Even if there's never any overt favoritism, there's always the potential for and perception of favoritism. To the perceiver, perception is reality, and the perception of favoritism is frequently present whenever people related to each other and working for the same employer have an on-the-job relationship.
