Family businesses

More than 50 per cent of Hungarian enterprises are run by family members meaning that their presence is significant in the economy. We account family businesses a separate group, because of the absolutely different characteristics of problems they have to face: there is more than working relation between owners, managers and employees, there is a family, thus an emotional connection as well. There are fields were this special relation contributes to efficiency, in others it stands as an obstacle to that.

Together with you we attempt to handle the most delicate cases such as the management of the business and to develop the efficient decision model to be followed by family members, but not always reflecting the relations within the family. Typical weakness of successful family businesses is that the members working in it suffer from the role conflict between their status in the workplace and in the private life, often mixed up (e.g. not always the head of the family is the most efficient top manager of the business). We offer you methods to separate family and business finances and other needs. First enterprises were launched shortly after the change of the political regime, actually, these are facing the issue of succession: parents close to retirement hand over business to their children. Succession is the most delicate field in family businesses, so it is very much in time to learn about the conditions creating difficulties in the situation and to start off well-prepared second-generation businesses.

During its 15 years of operation SEED Foundation has continuously gathered experiences related to family businesses and has broadened its knowledge to share it with third parties. Besides others, also for this reason we have carried out the first Hungarian survey on family businesses in 1997, and have organised several events exclusively designed for family businesses. We do our best to provide an efficient representation of their interests and we grasp every tool to promote the network development of entrepreneurs.

SEED trainings:

• Things to know, to learn, to do for family businesses
• Communication and negotiation techniques for micro-entrepreneurs and prospective entrepreneurs
• Conflict management and problem solving for micro-entrepreneurs and their employees
• Growth management of family businesses
• Knowledge and competences on employment for micro-entrepreneurs and their employees
• Facts about the European, grant writing