Are you allowing your job to ruin your family life? Are you always arguing about how important your work is and why the family needs to understand?

Too many individuals fail to protect their families by drawing and observing clear boundaries between work and family life.{{more}} Children and spouses often feel abandoned when family members consciously choose to spend more and more time at work or with work colleagues, not because they have to, but because they want to do so.

Take a moment to review these signs that your job may be jeopardizing the quality of your family life. Even in tough economies, jobs come and go but family truly is forever. If you can see yourself in many of these danger signs, it’s time to make some adjustments.

1. Both parents are working and the children often have to fend for themselves or spend many nights alone or with other family members and friends.

2. You enjoy spending the weekend with friends from work instead of with family.

3. Work colleagues are regulars at your house.

4. Your conversations at home centre around your challenges and celebrations at work.

5. Your cell phone constantly rings at home and it’s a work colleague.

6. You have regular long conversations with one or two work friends while at home.

7. You regularly miss family functions or your children’s important activities because you have to work or you are with work colleagues.

8. You consult your work colleagues often when making family decisions.

9. You share your emotional issues with work colleagues before you tell your significant other or even instead of telling your significant others.

10. You have an “office spouse”.

11. You travel for your job on a regular basis and your family has expressed concern.

12. You have not had a meal together with your family in recent weeks.

13. You are married or in a committed relationship, but you are romantically involved with someone at work as well.

14. You have frequent arguments about your job with your significant other.

15. You see work as an escape from dealing with the day-to-day challenges that are a part of normal family living.

Karen Hinds is “The Workplace Success Expert.” For a FREE SPECIAL REPORT on Avoiding Career Killers in the Workplace, send an email to info@workplacesuccess.com

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