Working at home in your pajamas while saving hundreds of dollars may sound too good to be true, but it isn't. More and more employees are telecommuting, doing their job from home or another remote site.

" It's a trend that's here now and you're going to see a lot more telecommuting because people don't want to have to put up with commuting. They want more work/life balance, they want less stress in their lives and companies want to drive costs after their bottom lines," says John Edwards, President of the International Telework Association and Council. ITAC is a non-profit organization working on the economic, social and environmental benefits of teleworking.

In 1990 there were four million telecommuters in the United States. Last year, there were 24-million employees doing their job from home or another remote site. And Edwards says that number is expected to reach 40 million by the year 2010.

Edwards says telecommuting has many benefits to employers - lower costs for real estate, recruiting and increased retention rates of telecommuting employees with lower absenteeism rates.

However, Edwards says there are two challenges to making telecommuting work: the availability of broadband and changing the style of management…

"The people at the top of the organizations see it instantly. The biggest problem at the moment is dealing with middle management who are uncomfortable with results oriented management style, they are used to the line of sight management style and they have to change to more results-oriented management style which can often be slightly confrontational and they feel uncomfortable with that."

Edwards says telecommuting kills distance - and a lot of face to face meetings are replaced by teleconferences "Distance does not exist anymore. It's the death of distance, if you like. So now it's possible to have more virtual teams so the necessity to have the old bricks and mortar existing is beginning to disappear."

Edwards says there are many companies that have successful telecommuting programs.

"There is a company called Unisys Outsourcing in northern Virginia and they telework 100-percent of their people and they've saved about 98-percent on their real estate costs. AT&T have 55-percent of their management, their management - not just staff, working at least one day a month from home, 33-percent working one day a week from home. so some huge success out there."

As for employees - there are benefits such as working out of your home while taking care of your children, but Edwards says there is are other benefits to telecommuting.

"There is a huge reduction in your personal stress in your life, the children usually recognize you during the week rather than saying who is this strange person on the weekends. In this area you have problems with the weather when the roads are just horrible and you work from home very easily, and there's a lot of personal savings in gasoline, especially when gas is the price it is at the moment, and there's reductions in car service costs."

Edwards says teleworkers must be a self-starter with a good productivity record and low absenteeism - and he says they need to be self-disciplined enough to stop working. But Edwards says with results-oriented management, employees don't need to feel guilty for getting the work done and then taking a break…

"One of the questions we've been asked is…a lady sent us an e-mail saying I'm working so more productively from home that I feel guilty about it as far as my workers back at, my colleagues back at the office is concerned. Should I ask my manager for more work? And we said to her, well if I were you I'd just enjoy the spare time and go to the gym."

Edwards says employees interested in telecommuting should make their case to employers on a cost benefit analysis and detail what the employer will save by having a telecommuting employee. However, he says telecommuting does not fit everyone's lifestyle or work activities, but he says there are some areas of the country - such as in northern Virginia and California - that could have up to 60-percent of the population telecommuting in the future.

Supplemental Information:
The International Telework Association and Council is a non-profit organization dedicated to the economic, social and environmental benefits of telwork. www.telecommute.org

Telework Facts from the International Telework Association and Council :

• Employers can save 63% of absenteeism costs per teleworker
• Teleworkers can save 52.9 minutes of commute time each workday
• 53% of teleworkers say the ability to work at home is important to their employment choice
• Telework can cut corporate real estate costs by 25 to 90%
• $8,000 per worker in office space savings possible annually.
• A 40 minute commute equals eight working weeks every year
• Teleworkers work:
  38% of their time at their computer
  24% reading, research and analysis
  9% in face-to-face meetings
• Teleworkers are often 20 to 25% more productive than office workers