Best Practices for Hiring Family Members as Employees

Whether you are just starting up a new business, or your business is already flourishing, you do need to hire employees at some stage. Hiring friends and family in your business can be an advantage in many ways, i.e. you do not need to waste time and money on the hiring process if you find the talent right at your home, it can be a great way to increase family income and most importantly, no one else could love managing your business as much as a family member will.Regardless of the reason, hiring family members can be advantageous as well as disadvantageous. In order to strike a balance between the pros and cons of hiring a family member, it’s important that you adopt the right management process.

Depending upon your business needs you must first analyze if hiring a family member is advantageous or not, i.e. some of the most common advantages are cutting costs, having an expert onboard, managing business secrets as so on. However, all these can also be found in non-family hiring.

Well, if you have already decided to have a family member onboard, make sure to follow the best practices of involving family members in your organization. After all you have to make sure that business matters do not affect the personal lives. In order to have maximum satisfaction, follow some of the guidelines below:

Treat them at par with other employees

When hiring someone from within the family, there should not be any sort of preferential treatment given to your family member. If he does great work he should be rewarded just like other employees, whereas in case of goof-ups, you shouldn’t think twice before reprimanding him.

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Draft transparent job descriptions

The roles and responsibilities of the family member should be drafted and communicated in a clear and transparent way and he or she should be encouraged to show extra care and affection towards the betterment of the company being a family member.

Maintain discipline

Often, some family members feel like taking an advantage of being a family member and this may cause disciplinary issues in the organization. It should be made clear to them that no late coming, casual attitude towards work etc. will be tolerated and they are to report the relevant person (HR) just like any other employee. Moreover, the accountability of the employee needs to be fixed without any discrimination.

Concluding:

Family members being the closest people to you can be of great advantage, especially when you want to take your business to the next level and looking for someone who is willing to put in equal or more effort. But, you must also remember, that workplace discrimination, and improper management within the organization will just turn your decision of hiring a family member into a disaster. It’s not about hiring a friend or family member; it’s about how you get optimum results out of this hiring.