New Venture Lab: Equipping Christian Entrepreneurs

If you have employees in your business or if you manage employees, you will know what I mean when I say that the current system of employing employees doesn't work very well -- especially when compared to a family business with a family working together. 

 

In early American history (and indeed much of world history), most business enterprises were family businesses with fathers working together with wives and children, where the fathers and mothers not only passed along skills, but also shepherded their children while working for a common purpose: the family economy.  The family could bond as they had common motivation, common compensation and common culture, all inside the intact family jurisdiction, the very center of economic activity.

 

As the industrial revolution spread across America, men were lured away from the home into the workplace and later on with the rise of public schools, children were also taken out of the home.  And in the last century, women abandoned their homes for the workplace in droves, leaving the majority of American homes dark, empty shells only used in the evenings and on weekends.  This has not only led to the disintegration of the family during the best hours of the day, but has also often led to the permanent death of a family as commonplace workplace romances split marriages and families asunder.

 

Not only does the modern workplace environment harm the family, the workplace concept itself contains major problems with employees including issues with motivation, compensation, management, culture and jurisdiction.

 

Motivation

 

While family members that are all working together are motivated by common goals, it is typically very difficult to align an employee's motivation with an employer.  While the employer is motivated by growing the value of the company (by growing revenue and earnings) and preserving the reputation of the company, an employee is motivated by job security, pay and benefits with little regard for the reputation of the company.

 

Compensation

 

While family members work together to maximize the family earnings and the entire family benefits from more earnings, employers and employees are always at cross purposes with each other.  Employers want more work for less money, while employees want more money for less work.  Add to that, the fact that employers have to pay an employee a fixed salary and then hope that the employee does the work they are supposed to perform. 

 

Management

 

If a family leader is doing his job properly by leading, protecting and guiding the family, leading the family enterprise is a natural extension from the breakfast table and morning devotions right into the workday routine, all with the God-given authority to correct, train, motivate, etc.  In an employer/employee setting, however, employers spend an enormous amount of time simply "managing" employees and trying to keep them focused on their work.  I find that the majority of my day can easily be eaten up on issues with our hundreds of employees ranging from not showing up for work, not showing up on time, not performing quality work, having attitude problems, taking excessive smoke breaks, taking excessive cell phone breaks, gossiping, demands for more money or benefits, complaining, quarreling and squabbling amongst each other, etc.  In short, they are bringing all of their sin issues into the workplace.  Read any good employee manuals lately?  Ours is hundreds of pages long -- all in an effort to come up with the countless rules required to try to keep employees informed and in line.

 

Culture

 

While the family culture clearly stays intact all day with the family bond and a common belief system, a typical employer will spend a tremendous amount of time and effort attempting to build a common company culture with the various employees who bring vastly different sets of experiences and values to the company.  Show me a large company and I will show you a large expenditure every year on company retreats, employee gatherings, team building exercises, meetings, etc. that are all designed to try to build a common culture, a nearly impossible task given the diversity of the employees and the rapid turnover of the workforce.

 

Jurisdiction

 

The family is clearly one of three God-ordained jurisdictions along with the church and state and the family has always been the home of economic activity until the past one hundred years or so.  The new workplace model has given rise to a new jurisdiction: a faceless, soulless corporation that crosses boundaries and creates new "yokings" between employees with little oversight from the other three jurisdictions.  One obvious issue with this kind of yoking is that men are often yoked at work with other men's wives with various roles of reporting relationships, authority structures and work teams, all creating an environment fraught with confused emotions and sexual tension.

 

Even though most of us in my generation are in a standard company environment where we wrestle daily with these issues, we should look to reclaim the Biblical pattern of a family-centered economy and forgo the problems with employees.  What happens if your growth outstrips your family's capacity?  At that point, I would recommend outsourcing the lower-valued tasks or processes to other families or companies.  I find it a lot easier to manage a service level agreement and a supplier than managing a building full of employees.