It once was common for only the father of the family to bring in the income, but as the world grows and expands it is becoming a lot more common for anyone of working age in a family to be contributing. With this development, the rise of family-owned businesses has been prominent within the past one hundred years.
This rise in family-owned businesses brings up the following question: Should you keep business and family separate?
There’s a few advantages and disadvantages for one to consider before deciding what works best for them and their family.
Having trusted people handle aspects of a business can give one peace of mind. And, after all, who is more trustworthy than one’s family?
If one has a strong family bond, years of trust have built up, so leaving aspects of one’s business to people that they trust the most may take away aspects of work world stress. It may be reassuring to know that an individual one has trusted their whole lives will be handling sensitive business matters, instead of someone that has been trusted solely by an interview and background check.
Working in a family business gives one’s family the opportunity to spend more time together.
This could be seen as both an advantage and a disadvantage. Some people’s work schedules make spending time with family difficult, and this would solve that issue, but there is also the aspect that if one spends an entire workday with the same people they will be spending the evening with and wake up with the next morning, it could become tiresome.
Business will most likely cut into family time.
Working with family may seem like a great idea until the extended family is gathered around the dinner table for the holidays, and the two business partners are fighting over a task that they could not leave at the office. Strict rules and boundaries may help prevent this, but the emotions will be there regardless of if it is spoken about or not.
It could damage one’s familial relationships.
Everyone has experienced getting frustrated with their coworkers and going home in need of venting about their day. This may become significantly more difficult if the coworker they need to vent about is their spouse or their spouse’s favorite nephew. Frustration over business may strain relationships that otherwise would not need to be strained.
It may help the business run smoother.
For anyone debating whether or not to involve their family in their business, they most likely are considering this partly because the family has many like-minded individuals that hold similar values. The level that one knows their family compared to a hired employee one does not know well may help ideas smooth quicker. If they have a history of working well together, it may make the business a more enjoyable environment.
What works for one family may not work for another family.
Some family-owned businesses work, and others fail, both for various reasons. Ultimately one should review with themselves and others in the family to see if a family-owned business is something that may potentially work for them.
