If you’re a business owner, it can sometimes be hard to find good, reliable people to work for you. One way you might be thinking of working around this is to hire people that you already know in your life, including family members. 

But while working with your family can have its upsides, it can also be a challenge in many situations as well. So to help ensure that you and your family members can all be working together in building a successful business, here are three tips for hiring family members in your business. 

Make Expectations Clear

Before you hire any of your family members, be it a young sibling just out of college or an elderly loved one looking for their last job before moving into a senior living facility, you need to make sure that both you and your family member are clear about the expectations of them being employed by you. 

Having anyone be in charge of you at work can be hard for some people. But when that person is their family member that they have a personal relationship with outside of work and see in a very casual setting on a regular basis, respecting that authority can sometimes be a hard transition. Luckily, clear expectations can help with this. 

For whatever the job is that you’re hiring your family member for, make sure you have a written job description for them, that you’re clear about hours and benefits, and that you have a plan in place for how to deal with any HR-type issues. 

Maintain Boundaries

Because you know your family members better than many of your other employees, and they know you better too, it can sometimes be hard to maintain professional boundaries with them in the workplace. Additionally, if you hire multiple different family members that know each other, having them work together can sometimes be a challenge.

With this in mind, you may want to create boundaries at work where family members don’t work in the same department or don’t have direct authority over one another. By taking these measures, you can help ensure that everyone in your family and on your staff can maintain healthy boundaries both at work and outside of work. 

Don’t Offer Preferential Treatment

When you have family members working for you, you might be tempted to be more lenient with them than you are with other staff members. Additionally, you may allow them to be late for things, take more sick days, or generally be a lower quality employee than you may allow for non-familiar employees. However, this is something that should not happen. As the owner of the business, you need to commit yourself to not having preferential treatment with family member employees. 

If you have a business and you’re thinking about hiring some of your family members to work for you, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you maneuver these waters.