I couldn t resist this question as it brings me back to my childhood, growing up as a part-time worker in a family business. While my parents must have thought about putting the kids to work as a financial matter, I don t think that was their main motivation. And I wonder whether it should be yours.Here s how it played out for me. I was just entering my teens when my parents bought their first motel, which was both a business and our home for about five years. Helping out in the business wasn t presented as an option; my parents didn t ask me whether I wanted to work. We all pitched in doing both the menial jobs like cleaning a room when a housekeeper didn t show up and those I thought were fun like checking in guests, designing brochures or even handling the payroll. My parents always paid me. And I got a pretty decent understanding of money at a young age. Still, I often resented the work or was embarrassed by it. I went to school with a lot of kids who didn t have to work, and as a teen wanting to fit in, my life looked pretty different from the lives of other kids with part-time jobs. Even when I resented it though, I knew it was valuable stuff. I even wrote my college entrance essay on living above a motel and working in a family business. When I look back at the experience, I see many benefits, not just the financial ones that probably flowed to my parents from having help on hand. That all said, there can be huge downsides to working with family. Which is why there are legions of consultants and psychologists who specialize in counseling members of family businesses run amok. I saw some of the challenges of working with one s children. But hiring or working with adult family members or even spouses, raises different kinds of tensions. If you re considering hiring a family member, I d think past the issue of whether it will benefit you financially and ask some other questions. Will you be able to communicate with a family member the same way you d need to communicate with an employee? Will the working relationship complicate the family one? Will you be able to provide the family member with opportunities to learn and build skills that could be useful elsewhere? Good luck.
In some businesses you can hire family cheaply or not pay them at all...for instance in a restaurant business they can work for tips or for nothing but at the end of the day they will have food to eat because you will be buying in bulk.
