A post on one of the forums I follow, was reminding people that October (in the US) is National Work and Family Month. More than 5 years ago, the U.S. Senate concurred with the National Work-Life Initiative that “supporting a balance between work and personal life is in the best interest of national worker productivity” and that “reducing the conflict between work and family life should be a national priority” and declared October to be National Work & Family Month.  It’s meant to bring awareness to everyone that having a good work- family balance benefits all parties.

Working from a home office as I do, some might think it is easy to balance out work and family. It has its benefits; I can take a 15 minute break and vacuum, walk the dog or put supper in the oven – all things that help my family along. But there are also many challenges that come from having your office in your home.  Overcoming these challenges usually comes down to planning and communicating.  You need to make sure you can do your work, but have your family and friend time as well – in many cases that is why you have your office at your home.

What challenges could I have working at home?

Think about it, when you work in a large corporate office, friends would rarely drop in to chat or have a coffee.  They also think twice about calling you during work, most things can wait. When you have a home office – that separation of work and home is not as clear to everyone.

Working from home means setting your boundaries for everyone, including yourself, and following them; achieving a good balance is possible if you know the limits and expectations. These boundaries will help you have the time with your family and friends that everyone needs to keep them in balance with life.  What kinds of limits?

Here are 5 tips that will help keep you on track to balance your work-family.

1. Let everyone know your work hours and follow them.  Post them on your office door and on your voice mail messages, this way everone knows what to expect from you. Try not to make too many exceptions or you’ll find the “work hours” mean nothing.
2. Use Caller ID to help you determine which calls should be answered during office hours.  If it’s your kid’s school; you may want to pick it up, but if it’s Maxine, the neighbourhood gossip, let it go.
3. Set a schedule for breaks and use them to refresh yourself; whether it’s to make a quick phone call, do a quick chore; or read some of the paper.  Getting out of your office will do wonders for your mental state!
4. Keep work and family emails separate.  If you are like me and keep in touch with people by email or facebook or you belong to volunteer organizations, make sure you have a separate email address you use for family and things not involving work.  So many people communicate via email, the last thing you need is to miss a vital work-related email because you had missed it sorting thorugh the hundreds of emails in the inbox.  If your emails are unmanageable and keep you from doing your work, you may want to consider hiring a Virtual Assistant to do some email management for you.
5. Set a schedule for reading emails.   This is one task that can really bog your time down if you don’t set limits, especially when working alone, it’s easy to get lost in reading and answering emails. Lost time can mean tkaing more time to finish work and results in less time with family.

A few simple things to help you separate your work and family and achieve the balance everyone needs.

I must sign off now, it’s 3:00 and my office shuts down until 7pm so I can get the kids from school, make supper and play a rousing game of Sorry!

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