Twenty-two percent of working dads said their jobs have had a negative impact on their relationships with their children, with time management playing a role in the disruption of precious family time. Less than half (46 percent) of working dads said they have missed a significant event in their child’s life in the last year due to work; 26 percent said they have missed more than three.
Leaving work at work is having a negative impact on home life. One quarter of working dads stated that they work more than 50 hours a week; more than one in five (24 percent) said they bring work home at least once, if not more, a week. Nearly half (47 percent) of working dads said they spend fewer than three hours a day with their children during the work week, while 22 percent said they spend less than two hours and 6 percent are only able to spend an hour.
Richard Castellini, Vice President of Consumer Marketing at CareerBuilder.com and father of three offers the following tips to help working dads gain a healthy balance between their work and home lives:
2.Work from one household calendar - Consider putting up one calendar in the house that everyone can access and update. Baseball games, recitals and other activities should be included with business trips and longer company meetings. This will allow the whole family to be organized and reduce the amount of scheduling confusion.
3.Pull out your work only after the sun has gone down - On the nights that you bring work home, limit the amount of email checking or even working until the children have gone to sleep. When you are at home, your focus should be on your children.
4.Schedule time - A great way to make sure you and your children spend quality time together is to schedule activities with them each week. These don’t have to be eight-hour events, but more along the lines of a bike ride, a trip to the playground, or even just to play a game.
5.Invite your family to your office- Look at your schedule and block off some time for your family to stop by and see where you work and meet your co-workers. Some organizations even schedule kid-friendly potlucks with other co-workers and their families.
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive® on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 955 U.S. male employees (employed full-time; not self-employed with at least one child under 18 years old living at home) between February 11 and March 13, 2008, respectively. Percentages for some questions are based on a subset of responses to certain questions. With a pure probability sample of 955 one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 3.2 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies. A full methodology is available upon request.
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CareerBuilder.com is the nation’s largest online job site with more than 23 million unique visitors and over 1.6 million jobs. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company, The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), the company offers a vast online and print network to help job seekers connect with employers. CareerBuilder.com powers the career centers for more than 1,600 partners, including 140 newspapers and leading portals such as America Online and MSN. More than 300,000 employers take advantage of CareerBuilder.com’s easy job postings, 26 million-plus resumes, Diversity Channel and more. CareerBuilder.com and its subsidiaries operate in the U.S., Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.careerbuilder.com.
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