If companies had their way, they would have their workers working 24-hours per day, seven days per week. Workers tend to compromise and try to get as close to the standard eight hours as possible. It quite often doesn’t work, and they end up putting in several more hours.

Many of these same workers also bring their work home. They continue working and put family needs aside.

If this is a common practice in your life, you may want to change the situation. Work is important. But, there is more to life. You need to figure out how to strike a good work/life balance.

Companies have the upper hand because they pay you a salary. If you challenge them too much, you may lose your job. It’s never good to find yourself in that position. However, you can make compromises, especially if the company values you as an employee.

Some companies have learned that working employees too hard is not beneficial to the employees or the company. Overwork leads to burn out, and once that happens, employees are not as productive.

If you can, try to convince your boss or the company that staff should be ready to work overtime when it’s needed, instead of making them do it all the time. There are going to be situations where you will need to stay late. Often that happens in project work when you are getting close to the deadline.

When you aren’t close to any deadlines, let your boss know that you want to have more of a work/life balance. If you can get the rest of your team to do the same, you can make it happen.
If your boss lets the team have its way, You shouldn’t use this as an excuse to let all the work pile up until it gets near the deadline. That is a risky move as you could miss the deadline. Once that happens, you can expect the boss to make you stay late all the time so that it doesn’t happen again.

When you have a good work/life balance, make time to spend with your loved ones. Try to minimize the amount of work you bring home. The best scenario is not to bring any of it home. Give your undivided attention to your family knowing that work will be there when you arrive the next day, or after the weekend.