Another great challenges to any full-time member of the workforce is the challenge of balancing one’s life at home and at work. If you have struggled with this in the past, you already know how hard it can be to maintain that delicate balance without ticking off your boss or suffering through another fight with your loved ones. Luckily, there are some tips you can follow to help you alleviate this tension between the domains of home and work.

Living With Children and a Spouse

If you live with children and a spouse, you may already feel guilty sometimes about not spending enough time with them.

Balancing a Full-Time Job With Your Home Life

Examine areas of your work life that can be reduced or eliminated without losing your job. For example, if you constantly stay late at work on Friday nights, you could try to do the hardest, most necessary and most time-consuming tasks first on Friday mornings and then work your way down the list. When it’s time to go, you may just find that the most important things are done and everything else can be put off until Monday. Also, remember to step back and honestly evaluate what is important and what isn’t so important.

Living With Parents

You may be relatively young, and still live with your parents, for financial reasons or to take care of them. In this case, you should decide how much time you want or need to spend around them and ensure that work does not override this need. If your parents have been hinting that they’d like to see you more and you’re agreeable to this, find ways to separate yourself from work, make yourself unavailable for overtime shifts, or do whatever else it takes to spend more time around them.

Living With a Partner

Perhaps you are living away from most of your family, but share your place with a sweetheart. In this case, you have to be sensitive to how much time he or she feels entitled to spend with you. Some people are very clingy, while others are very independent, but most fall somewhere in between. If necessary, sit down and have a conversation with your partner addressing how they feel about your work hours and even asking for help to change them if possible. Set aside time on a regular basis to go on a date with them, even if you are already married. You might be amazed at what this can do for your relationship!

Living By Yourself/With Pets
If you live on your own, you are lucky to be a little more free than many full-time workers. You can spend as much time at work as you would like, except if you have pets. Remember to keep a consistent routine as much as possible so they get fed, walked or cared for at the same time each day. This will help keep them reassured that you are returning home for them. If you have no pets, you should figure out how much time you want to spend at home, relaxing with yourself for company! There’s no use in burning yourself out just because you don’t have anyone to go home to.

Balancing your full-time job with your home life is a tricky task, but with time and practice it becomes easier to master. Take into account your individual situation and remember to take time off when you need to preserve your own mental health.

Computer technology has led to some stunning advances in worker productivity, but that technology has also created many opportunities for wasting time. From chat rooms and instant messaging to social networking and online auctions, today’s workers have no shortage of distractions. Some companies have grown so concerned over this unauthorized internet usage that they have begun to implement strong policies restricting the personal use of email and internet resources.

Employers are using a number of different approaches to fight unauthorized use of the internet, instant messaging, email and other electronic resources. There are a number of monitoring software packages on the market designed to allow employers to track where their employees go on the internet and what they are doing when they are at their desks. Some of these packages restrict access to certain websites, much like parental control software. Other monitoring packages allow users unrestricted access to the web, but capture screen shots that can be emailed to a supervisor once or twice a day. These monitoring packages make it easy for employers to counsel workers who are spending too much time online, while helping to identify potential problems before they become too serious.

Other software monitoring solutions record all internet traffic and flag suspicious activity based on a number of user defined inputs. This allows employers to tailor their approach to the needs of the company, providing a much more user friendly package for busy managers. Other companies painstakingly analyze logs of internet activity looking for patterns of abuse. Much of this monitoring is automated, but sometimes workers actually look through the logs in search of suspicious activity.

With so much at stake it is no wonder so many companies are taking a hard line on personal use of the internet, email and other company resources. Not only does personal internet use represent a waste of time and productivity, but personal email use and the visiting of questionable websites could put the company in hot water legally. When implementing an internet usage policy companies need to be proactive, balancing the needs of their workers with the needs of the organization.