Balancing Act

Small-business owners struggle to fit family needs into hectic work schedule.

By Jennifer Ehrlich

For many entrepreneurs, becoming the boss also means an end of time-off, vacation time and all of the spare time people devote to their families. 

It is difficult to advise small-business owners to simply reduce their number of hours on the job when investing as much time and energy as possible in the business may mean the difference between success and failure.

Most healthy lifestyle gurus advise balancing work and family in a series of steps.  The steps inevitably center around the importance of open communication, flexibility and organization.

Companies must communicate with employees to better understand their needs, parents can communicate with children, and, and couples should communicate with each other.            

But it is communication a cure-all?  Tom Hubler, a family-business consultant as Hubler Family Business Consultants in Minneapolis, says no chance.

“Communication is critical in any situation but it’s not going to completely solve the problem in the case of small-business owners,” says Hubler.  “If I’ve told you I am not going to be around for six months because it’s the busy period, so what?”

Hubler says in cases in which small businesses clash with family priorities it is usually the business that survives.  If entrepreneurs realize from the outset that business is a continual series of problems that need to be solved rather than anomalies, it is easier to set aside time for family.

Routine Disasters

Anticipating personal emergencies should be part of business goals, according to Susan Seital, president of Work & Family Connection Inc. in Minneapolis.

“Everyone who has children has sick children at some time but each time it’s viewed as an emergency,” Seital explains.

Seital says there are ways small businesses can give employees time to handle personal crises, including subsidizing sick-child service, or keeping a laptop for emergencies in case people have to work from home.

Small-business owners may have to take more drastic measures to separate work from family.  In some cases that means making financial sacrifices as well as personal.

Being willing to relinquish the central role in the company in order to spend time developing a separate personal life is a crucial part of the process, Hubler says.  That means learning how to delegate responsibility and possibly absorbing the cost of hiring more people on a temporary basis. 

Small-business owners must learn to consider family obligations as important as business commitments, meaning marking things on a calendar in blood, attending that gymnastics meet no matter what happens at work, Hubler says.

In his advice to family-business owners, Hubler also suggests the family sit down and define what it means to be a family.

“All of us run around with little job descriptions in our head of what a good father does a good mother does,” Hubler says.  “What happens when we don’t talk about those things is that we end up being disappointed.  And that’s when things get distressed and fall apart.”

Some small-business owners get stuck operating in the same manner as the family vacation cliché:  We can’t stop now; we’re making good time.  In much the same way that the family mini-van gets whisked through the scenery on the way to the motel swimming pool, small businesses slog through the day, the week, the month, and before you know it, the year.

Small-business operators often are so focused on the day-to-day grind of getting out the product, delivering the service and paying the bills that the concept of stepping back seems laughable.  But stepping back – setting aside time to analyze the operation – can make a critical difference in both the company’s long-term success and the owner’s ability to enjoy the work.

Experts advise setting aside tome for a different type of “maintenance:” setting up a business plan, evaluating your human resources policies, and organizing your finances.  That includes trying – emphasis on trying – to establish balance between the demands of work and family.

One consultant tells the story of a small-business person who brought in the business’ financial records in a grocery bag.  Another tells of a small business that ignored harassment complaints until a costly lawsuit was filed.  Putting matters on the back burner doesn’t mean they won’t eventually flare up in flames.

That bind between coping with the ongoing job at hand and finding the time to be proactive is one in which many businesses find themselves.  Small Business Administration figures indicate that through the end of 1995, small businesses accounted for 98 percent of Minnesota’s 101,436 full-time firms with employees.  SBA figures also list 188,000 full-time self-employed workers.

We’ve included resource directories as a starting point for those busy small-business people who are look for help, either financial, educational or vocational.

Martha Buns, Small Business Extra editor.