We all have at least one friend we know from work. Whether the friend was our colleague, our superior or someone from our team, we all broke the professional boundary and developed a personal relationship from a work relationship. When you form a bound with someone you work with things tend to be simple since you know the professional relationship should stay the same despite the fact that you formed a friendship. The situation is a little bit complicated when someone opens a business and thinks about hiring their friends. There are people who think hiring a friend is the best decision you could make, while other believe it is the most terrible decision for your business so before deciding if you should hire your friends to work for your startup, check our lists of pros and cons:
Pros For Hiring Your Friends To Work For Your Startup
Recruiting friends or former colleagues is a very common practice for people who decided to launch their own startup. In case you are thinking to do the same thing, here are two most important pro arguments:
You Know The People You Are Going To Work With
You know your friends, especially if you worked with them before so you know what to expect from them. You understand their passions, their lives and their decisions so you know how to collaborate and talk to them to make the best decisions for your startup. Also, recruiting people is an expensive process so if you know you can count on your friends to do a good job, consider hiring them.
You Can Pay Them Less At The Beginning
If your friends believe in your idea, they will be willing to work for you for less money until you manage to get off the ground. Having a small budget for salaries doesn’t allow you to recruit the best in the industry but working with your friends will allow you to have experts in your team without compromising your marketing or development budget.
Cons For Hiring Your Friends To Work For Your Startup
Even though you can pay your friends less and you can trust them in your personal life, there are some arguments against hiring friends that you can’t ignore before deciding what is best for your startup.
Your Friendship Is In Danger
Your friend knows you and respects you however, when the relationship changes from friendship to a boss-employee relationship, there can be some tensions that can break your friendship. No matter how well-meaning one of you is, the expectations in the workplace are different than the ones in your personal lives.
It Is Hard To Set Boundaries
If you know your friends struggle with their personal life, you will be tempted to give them time off or to allow them to focus on their problems instead of working for your startup. This is a nice gesture from a friend but your business might be affected on the long run. When you don’t have a personal relationship with your employees it is easier to be objective and to give them time off only when needed. When you befriend an employee the story is very different since your relationship started with the other person knowing your work expectations before knowing you personally.
There are other things you should consider before hiring a friend but they depend on your relationship and other aspects that are known by you however, no matter your decision, we highly recommend a serious discussion with your friends that will allow them to understand your work expectations if you plan to hire them or they understand your reasons for not doing so.