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I'm going to offer an alternative way of framing your negative

It's unlikely it'd bring any value to their lives

This statement tells me that your family might not be the target market for the service.

I don't have the full context of your service and your family to make it into a nicer, more concrete example, but when asked again, I'd list a few reasons why the service is not interesting to your family besides "I'd like to keep work and personal life private" and recommend they seek volunteers among the target market for the service.

If even then they still insist in marketing to the wrong audience, I'm also seconding the other answer's advice on getting out of there, mainly because their senior leadership cannot recognize a wrong strategy when slapped with it in the face.

It is unlikely to hold you back (in western countries).

Companies commonly trial new services or products with so called "friendly users" - quite often employees or families of employees. People who, if something is wrong (which is likely during early trials) won't immediately complain on social media or the press, but talk to - in this case - you about it and you can give feedback to the company.

This is not intended as a free service to your family, it's a testing opportunity for the company and the benefit for your family would be free/early use of the service.

So you are absolutely free to decline. If you are being asked repeatedly, it's a sign they can't get enough trial users - maybe others are declining as well?

That your company keeps asking this despite you saying no repeatedly suggests that they are desperately looking for beta users for the product. I'd suggest saying no again, and explaining why on that basis.

Look, the truth is my family members would have no value, maybe negative value, as beta users. They're not our customers - Even if I get them to sign up, they don't really have any interest in the service, won't use it all that much anyway, and any feedback they'd give wouldn't be reflective of our target audience and may just lead us off course.

This addresses the request on its own terms. You're not saying no for unrelated reasons - your interests are aligned. You want users, but your family are not that. Just make that clear and it should put an end to the matter if their motives are reasonable.

To avoid conflict, you can tell your family said no.

This does not even need to be a white lie, you can ask your family (and explain the advantages and disadvantages and tell them that they should not say yes to do you a favour) and probably will get a no.

No means no. If they asked you once to involve your family in their company, that was pushing a boundary pretty hard. If they repeatedly won't take "no" for an answer to an unreasonable request, that's preposterous.

These people are unprofessional weirdos. If they're this desperate to find anybody to try their service, they're almost certainly doomed in any case.

Keep saying "no". Tell them you're uncomfortable being pressured about it. And start a serious job search immediately.

Is this likely to hold me back?

We don't know your company culture or your senior members, so it's pretty hard for us to say if it's likely to hold you back. We don't even know what your product is.

It is likely that they cannot legally do anything.
It is also possible that this may affect how invested you appear to be in the company.
This can have various consequences and may be difficult to prove as a motivation. If you feel that it's affecting your work and feel that you have legitimate cause to believe so (overheard someone saying you were non-committed, or some other sort of solid evidence), then it may be time to brush up your resume.

I'm sure there are many companies where not using the company's product is not a good thing. I can't imagine it would go over well for Netflix employees to say "Sorry, my family only watches Amazon Prime."

In the extreme, you have countries where Coca-cola workers can be 'fired' for going to a restaurant that serves Pepsi. But unless you're in a small startup where 'company values' are highly valued, this is unlikely to actually affect you in the UK.

If you worry about the situation, let's try to resolve it another way. What if you start supervising a volunteers group via social media or any equivalent? If the company product is really a thing, there could be bunch of people who happily be a one of early adopters, a part of a focus group etc. Give it a try, why not?

Let's say you're working for Facebook or similar social media before they were popular. But you can't be bothered with promoting the very service you're working on? Either:

1. you really don't care about the service, which is bad enough;


2. or maybe the service is so bad that it's going to be a disaster, that's even worse.

I'd say the first case is more likely. The boss is still believing in the service, but you don't like it well enough to promote it. The boss is definitely not going to like you. They could even blame you for hurting morale.

This is bad for you! It will definitely hold you back.

Which kind of product do you work for that not even your family wants to use? Maybe you should revisit your morals if you are selling a product to other people that you don't actually love to have at home yourself.