Three Challenges You Are Likely To Face While Joining Your Family-Business It is important to Distinguish Between Work and Personal Relationships

Family- owned businesses have always been part and parcel of India's business ecosystem. No wonder according to a Credit Suisse report, followed by US and China, India has third highest number of family-owned businesses.

Most of the family-owned businesses come along with heritage which directly transforms into responsibility. Hence even though a lot of us think family-business is perfect picture, but honestly the job isn't easy.

If you are among the few who are likely to join your family-run business, following are some of the challenges you are most likely to face.

Role Definition

Defining roles in a family set up is quite challenging. In addition to simply defining roles, it is essential to set roles based on an individual's strengths. This improves productivity and optimizes efficiency in such settings. In case of no clear role demarcations, operational issues build up.

It is also important to distinguish between work and personal relationships, Glen Murzello, Director at Gentech Machines & Pharma Equipments and Director, Contex Engineering feels many a times when these two culminate, it often ends in bad taste.

"Depending on the nature of the business, family run businesses very often seen as high stress businesses considering the involvement of family, not only in terms of running the show but also in terms of finances. One needs to manage and balance professional and personal matters and time equally. While family run businesses have a strong and rigid support system in terms of borrowings and funding, this can also be viewed as a con in case of non-performing businesses or business verticals over a period of time," he shares.

Unorganized sector

Even though your family-business follow process and have professionals helping you around, chances are that your family business is part of the unorganized either directly and indirectly, which surely impact your business.

Lubeina Shahpurwala, Co-Founder, Mustang Socks & Accessories says such situations create a bigger challenge for businesses to enhance the customer experience in the midst of the unorganized clutter.

"It takes more than a strategy to embrace challenges. There is a dire need for the organized brands to come together and create a conducive environment for consumers to enrich and meet their expectations while keeping the quality in mind," she shared with BIZ Experiences India.

Skilled Talent

While the sector is heritage in nature, we have witnessed a lot of change in the internal functioning of the manufacturing business.

Shahpurwala thinks modern manufacturing business demands and expects innovation at a very fast pace due to digitalization, automation and with the constant introduction of newer technologies such as 3D printing, computer-aided design, among others.

"In this competitive environment, the demand is to scale up or become obsolete which leads to additional pressure on the workforce itself. Job opportunity in the sector has been immense but finding the suitable skilled workforce has always been a major challenge. Specially, with the new demands, the manufacturing segment itself is facing a continuous challenge to upskill its operations; and upskilling of labour becomes an additional area of concern," she points out.

The industry currently lacks appropriate training programs which is accessible and also affordable for the labour class, helping them enhance their skill sets to the ever changing industry requirements.