Making a family-run advice business work for all your employees

I’ve been very fortunate in the past 12-18 months to work with a great advice firm in helping their employees to develop Personal Development Plans. This firm is really committed to supporting their employees’ growth in both their current roles and in their careers overall.

As part of the work, I’ve had a series of 1:1 meetings with each member of staff. One (let’s call her Jane) is a relatively recent recruit, who opened up to me in quite a bit of detail about why she had changed jobs. After all, her previous employer is a well-regarded and respected family-run advice business. But herein lay the problem – the way her previous employer’s business was run didn’t work for Jane, who was not a member of the family. As a result, they ended up losing a highly effective and valued member of staff, despite their best efforts to retain her.

So, what can family run businesses learn from the experiences of Jane and others like her? While I’m not for one minute suggesting that your family run business displays all or even some of the following characteristics, these areas are worth checking off.

 

Have a clear strategy

Quite a number of family businesses start very small and then grow organically over many years, sometimes into very substantial businesses. Because there is often not a formal corporate structure in place, the strategy for the business can happen on the hoof and simply evolve over time.

This is all well and good for the family members who will have many informal chats at family dinners about where the business is going. However this excludes non-family members of the team, who are then operating in the absence of a strategy to get behind. They don’t share the same sense of purpose that family members will feel, and as a result feel disconnected from the ambitions of the business.

 

Don’t have two sets of rules

This is probably the biggest gripe, when it happens. Favouritism of family members in your advice business will quickly alienate the rest of the team. Your family business is exactly like any other business, needing set policies for everyone in relation to working hours, holidays, client entertaining etc.

The same also applies to behaviour around the office. You should expect the same standard from all in relation to dress code, language used and other behaviours. Letting standards slip with family members is a sure-fire way to driving a wedge between them and other team members.

 

Defined processes are a must

How work is actually carried out should be the same for everyone. Whether this is in relation to your advisers or your customer service team, standard processes should be used by all. This might apply in areas such as the recording of advice, the quality of files, the handover from consultant to internal people and the ongoing service to customers. All of these areas should be delivered in a defined and consistent way by every single member of the team. Otherwise, frustration will reign.

 

Career paths for all

It can be all too easy for family businesses to just rock along without any great career plans in place. After all, sure won’t Johnny or Mary just take over the running the business when mum/dad hang up their boots?

That unspoken career path is fine for the children of the owner, but not for the rest of the team. They want to see where their own careers are going, how they are going to grow in the years to come. Will there be promotion opportunities and a chance to earn more money for greater effort? Will there be ownership opportunities in the business or in a sub-section of the overall business? These are critical questions that your staff members will want clarity about.

 

External oversight

This final area will help the business owner to keep him/herself on their toes! It can be hard to give time to the seemingly less urgent and more subtle issues of the business when the day-to-day pace is frenetic, as is often the case in advice businesses. These areas can end up being relegated down the priority list and never addressed properly.

This is where an external mentor or a board of directors will help you. They will help you to see the wood from the trees, as they won’t get caught up in the minutiae of the business. They will help you to address all of these issues by keeping the development of the full team on the agenda and not letting it slide – they’ll keep you focused on meeting the challenges of your business.

 

Family run businesses play an extremely important and valuable role in the Irish financial advice community. They have delivered many of our brightest and most effective financial planners and advisers. Consider the areas outlined above, and your family-run business can build a broad, effective team and can join that elite cohort.