1)Emotion is always involved
You can’t get around this one despite how
hard you try and how many heart-to-heart
conversations you have. Emotion in personal
relationships is just part of the deal and in
the big scheme, is going to make for a
messy working environment, more often
than not.
2)Think about it: How is your cousin going to
feel when you, as his or her boss, is amid
having a serious talk about some failure or
adjustment that needs to be made? They’re
going to take it personally because you have
a personal relationship, which is bad for
business.
3)Expectations will vary
It’s easy to assume that the given family
member knows in advance that “they’re not
going to get any handouts,” but the reality is
that they’re always going to have different
expectations and limits buried deep inside
their brains than your other employees. Now,
this doesn’t mean that you’re intentionally
going to see them differently, but your family
member knows, deep down inside, that
they’re not your everyday employee — and
this will affect how they work inside your
company and handle disputes.
4)Your family members will be insiders
So you’ve done it, you hired your cousin and
they started a few months back. It’s Friday
night and you’re headed for a family event
for the weekend where said cousin will be in
attendance, along with their parents — your
aunt and uncle — and a slew of other family
members. You arrive and within an hour you
realise that the entire family knows more
about the inside of your business than you
could’ve imagined and it’s all the gossipy
nonsense that you wish never made it
outside your company headquarters.
Do you know why this happened? Because
your family is fascinated with what’s going
on inside your company, which you rarely
talk about other than from a 30,000-foot
viewpoint, and now they have the access
they’ve always wanted and are attaining
heaps of info from your new employee. Not
sure if that sounds fun to you — it sounds
like an absolute nightmare to me.
5)There will be perceived nepotism
You have brought on your cousin and
everyone else at the company knows it. The
difficulty comes when your cousin does well
and starts getting some recognition for it.
There will be people, without question, that
believe the sole reason for your cousin’s
success is that he or she is your family
member — unfortunately, they’ll just never
get past it.
Of course, it would be ideal to build such an
environment where the success of fellow
employees is as transparent as possible,
eliminating the possibility for nepotistic
thoughts amongst others, but sometimes it’s
just not that simple.
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True

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True talk
Don't ruin your business because of family ties
Especially by giving positions to those who have not been tested and trusted.