Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of McDan Group of Companies, Dr. Daniel McKorley has said most Ghanaian businesses fail because of the employment of friends and family relations in the running of the businesses.
Dr. Daniel McKorley noted that local owners of businesses which are showing great prospects are usually bombarded with requests from relatives and acquaintances for employment. These entrepreneurs out of benevolence, he added, end up employing the said relatives and acquaintances without really scrutinizing them to ascertain whether they possess the competence and skills required for the job.
As a result of the mode of employment, many of those employees, he observed, usually turnout to be square pegs in round holes running the businesses down and in some instances, taking advantage of their relationships with their employers to embezzle the business returns leading to the collapse of most businesses in the country.
For him, business owners should scrutinize and employ competent people who will help their businesses progress rather than employing relatives and acquaintances as way of supporting them and maintaining relationships.
“As your business grows, your customer base increases and so, you will need people to come in and support you serve your customers. This is the dangerous stage. Most Ghanaian businesses collapse at this stage and if you are not careful, you may make money but that money will only be cash. If you are not smart, the business will collapse because you will end up losing and having a lot of debts.
It will be at this point of your business that your brother’s wife will call you and ask you to employ her brother who is a graduate. Your school’s mate will also call you and ask for employment for their relatives. So if you employ them, you will wake up one day and realize that all your employees are chaff. They are those who will cause the collapse of your business because you have not employed them through the right channels. You’ve not interviewed them, you’ve not checked their backgrounds before employing them,” he said in an interview on JoyNews TV.
