Draft Your Family Employment Policy

Now it’s time to evaluate and build your family employment policy. Do you have one in place, either formal or informal? Is it serving your family well? Is it up-to-date with the complexities of your family’s interest in working in the business? Have you addressed all the critical career junctures?

Thinking through your own policy can be a two-step process. First, use figure 10-1 to identify your family’s current implicit or explicit policy. Take a moment to review the spectrum of options for each category we have discussed in this chapter. Where do your family policies fall on the spectrum? Circle the categories that most closely resemble what you have in place now. It’s okay to circle more than one if you’re not clearly in a single category. Looking across all the categories, does the sum of your circles represent the family employment policies and values that you want?

If you have no policies in place yet, start by crossing out the ones in figure 10-1 that wouldn’t work for your family. Then circle those that are most similar to what you have in place now, implicitly or explicitly.

For the second step, begin your family discussion about what you actually want. Your family can agree to have formal, written policies or implicit ones, you must think through and decide what’s right together. Who should decide? Each of the Four Rooms should be involved. But the final decision should be made in the Owner Room, since a family employment policy speaks to the fundamental values of the family as owners of the company.

For many family business leaders, their greatest joy is to see their children succeed in their business as employees. But successfully employing the next generation can be a thorny endeavor. As you can see, we are talking about a very different leadership task than in corporate environments. The rewards are different and deeper. Family business leaders can find meaning, money, and mentoring in ways not available in other types of businesses. The most successful family business leaders we know have great wisdom in how they do it: they don’t coddle; they challenge. A thoughtful family employment policy can help you provide family members with real jobs, real challenges, and a real chance to thrive.

*Adapted from the Harvard Business Review Family Business Handbook by Josh Baron and Rob Lachenauer. Pages 195 and 198-200.