Wellbeing of Employees in Family Owned Businesses in the COVID-19 Era: Anecdotal Evidence from Malaysia

The recent COVID-19 pandemic turned economies upside down; upending lives and their livelihoods. Among the most affected were small and medium family-owned businesses. Considering resource limitations of such businesses, ensuring survival of the enterprise, along with wellbeing of their employees was an existential challenge. Unlike non-family businesses, family firms are strongly driven by socio-emotional goals thereby making it difficult for them to focus only on self-preservation, without prioritising employees’ wellbeing. The literature indicates that family firms tend to manifest resilience during extreme crises; they tend to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure employees’ wellbeing. With the aim of exploring how family firms dealt with employees’ wellbeing during the pandemic, this chapter presents cases from different parts of Malaysia as anecdotal evidences to demonstrate how family-owned enterprises stretched their resources and their creativity in order to protect their workforce. In each case, the idiosyncratic responses of the different family firms are then related to concepts derived from the family business literature, such as socioemotional wealth, familiness, family social capital, etc. The chapter ends with a summary on the caring and resilient nature of family firms, as demonstrated by the Malaysian businesses presented in this study.