The Pros and Cons of hiring a family member

Starting a business requires capital and you might sometimes need to get credit for your business after reading about credit facilities on luminablog.com. Hence, you will want to get the best staff for productivity and profitability. Hiring a family member could be a double-headed sword. It could be for the advantage or disadvantage of the business. This means it could strike both ways – either positively or negatively. It could be a great move or a huge mistake. Many businesses have been ruined by family members while family members have helped in growing others. It’s therefore important to understand the Pros and Cons before making such a critical decision.

Pros of hiring a family member

Some of the pros of hiring a family member are discussed below.

You know the person and his potentials

There might be a family member that may just be a perfect match for you to succeed in business. You already know him/her: his/her talents, potentials, strengths, and capabilities. This means he/she could just be a perfect match for your business. In this case, it’s not a bad idea to hire a family member.

A family member may have good intentions about the business

Ideally, a family member sees your business as his/her. As you want to succeed in the business, so he/she wants it too. He/she works with a sentimental mindset that your business is also his/hers. If the business succeeds, he/she succeeds too and conversely. With this mindset, he/she avoids all forms of acts that could ruin or undermine the growth of the business.

A good family member wants to see the business grow

Partially discussed above, hiring a good family member could be a great asset to the business. He comes with the mentality that the business is his and must succeed. He has the interest of the business at heart and is ready to give in his best to see the business succeed. He may even accept lower remuneration just for the advantage of the business.

Less time is needed to bring a family member on board

Typically, unlike the usual rigorous method of starting to publicize vacancies, followed by interviews and the hard decision of picking the best hands, a family member is already a known person. You can just bring him or her on board and save the business from expending resources for recruitment.

Cons of hiring a family member

The cons of hiring a family member are discussed below.

A bad family member sees the business as a window to steal from you

Bringing on board a wrong family member could spell doom for your business. First, the growth of the business is not important to him. Thus, he can do just anything without considering the negative impact on your business. Apart from other undermining acts, a family member could see the employment as a huge opportunity to unnecessarily steal from you.

It depends on the position

Putting a family member in a managerial position e.g. accounting may be wrong. This is because an untrusted family member is a source of fall to the business.

Other employees may not be comfortable with the decision.

Bringing a family member on board could mean to other employees your unprofessionalism even though you mean no harm. Their thought could be that you would demonstrate favoritism towards the family member over others. It may be by time allotment, that is spending more time with a family member than other employees or granting promotion to a family member that others consider unmerited. Putting all together, your actions with a family member can negatively impact the morale and productivity of other employees and consequently become a key factor in your inability to retain valued employees.