Firing Family Members: Softening the Blow

It’s never easy to fire an employee, but when the employee is a family member, the task is considerably more difficult.

Let’s face it, you’ll probably never see a fired non-family member again. But depending on the relationship, you could have to face a fired family member regularly for the rest of your life. This makes it critical to handle the firing of a family employee with the utmost care and delicacy. Here are six suggestions to help make this dreaded task a little less painful and damaging to your relationship:

1. Communicate openly, honestly, and consistently: This step starts when employees are first hired. Make sure the family employee receives regular performance feedback from his or her supervisor, who ideally should not be another family member. It’s also a good idea to hold regular family employee meetings during which all family members are free to share their feelings or concerns openly and without fear of repercussions. By taking these proactive steps, family members should be well aware if their performance is not meeting expectations.
2. Keep the lines between “family” and “business” clear: This accomplishes two important things. First, it helps the family employee see that the decision was made strictly in the best interest of the business. And second, it should help the family employee not feel “fired” from the family, too.
3. Create a formal family employment policy: This policy should clearly spell out the specific conditions for employment of family members: how they will be hired, evaluated, promoted, compensated, and, if necessary, terminated. It can serve as an addendum to your regular employment handbook.
4. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s: Make sure you have well-documented support for your decision to terminate a family employee. This should include a detailed personnel file with performance reviews and evaluations and written substantiation of any warnings about performance problems or shortcomings. The more detail you have in writing, the easier it will be to support your firing decision, both to the family employee and to other family members who may question it.
5. Stay firm and unemotional: The termination of any employee can be extremely emotional, and the firing of a family employee even more so. But as much as you are able, keep the focus on the documented business and performance reasons for the termination and try to keep emotions out of it. And most important, don’t waver in your decision, regardless of how emotional the family employee may get. There’s no reason to feel guilty about a tough decision made in the best interest of your company.
6. Don’t go it alone: If possible, involve other executives or managers in the decision and the actual firing process, including your board of directors. This will help ease the perception (by the family employee and perhaps other family members as well) that you’re the “bad guy.” At the same time, however, don’t shy away from assuming responsibility for making the ultimate termination decision yourself. While it might be hard at first, the rest of your employees, including other family employees, will eventually respect you for it.