EMPLOYEE relations in your business is one of the hardest things for a business owner to get right, but it becomes even trickier if family members also join your team.

Those employees that are non-family members might not be too pleased if you bring family into the business. Especially if you remunerate family members better and promote them up to management quicker than non-family members. But there are ways around this.

Tony Balshaw, partner in Grant Thornton’s family-controlled company, says family-owned businesses need to create a distinction between family and management by drawing up clear policies.

He says employees will need to except that a business owner’s family members will always be favoured, but he also feels that business owners should strive to do what’s in the business’ best interest. “The best thing is to have a family creed and to share this with the family,” explains Balshaw.

He says the creed should contain things such as how family members and senior management are paid out.

Managers should be aware what your business’ policy is when it comes to promoting family members, he says.

Forming a family shareholder’s committee where family members can meet to discuss issues around the business, remuneration and promotions of family members, is another alternative.

He says if you award a family member a bonus, but don’t grant your other employees the same, you’ll be setting a bad president.

Similarly, you shouldn’t finance a family’s vehicle through the business even if it turns out to be the most affordable alternative. This may, again, send out the wrong message.

Dennis Venter, managing director of family-run business XLNT Panelbeater, says he has never experienced problems between family and non-family members in his business.

“We run this company as a family,” says Venter, who manages the four-year old business with his wife, his daughter and three sons. Five of his managers are non-family members.

He says part of the reason he pulled out of his previous business, which he ran with his brothers, was because of clashes between family members and non-family members.