How to Convince an Employer to Let You Work from Home

Are you inspired to turn in your badge and start working from home? Before you begin, see if your employer would consider allowing you to telecommute. Many telecommuters started with a traditional job and convinced their employer to allow them to telecommute at least part of the time after several years of hard work.
How do you approach your employer about telecommuting? The most important thing is to make sure you look at this step from your employer's viewpoint. Your employer doesn't want to pay you to stay at home in your pjs and goof off. You know you're not going to do that, but how do you convince the boss?

You need to show your boss what you can accomplish. Make a list of tasks you can complete from home. For example, a receptionist/secretary often finds it difficult to complete all of the secretarial work with the constant interruptions from phone calls and walk in customers or clients. Obviously, you can't greet customers at the desk from home, but perhaps you could telecommute once a week and spend that day working on forms, correspondence, and reports from home. A drafter I know needs to be on site to take measurements, but could complete drawings from home and could easily telecommute up to three days a week.

Once you have a list of tasks you could complete more easily from home, consider how you can reassure your employer. One receptionist took the show me approach. Instead of blurting out, "Hey, I want to work from home," she took a stack of correspondence to her boss and told her she would complete the entire amount the next day if she could work from home without interruptions. She made sure the work was completed and her boss saw results before she broached the idea of telecommuting every Friday. If her boss was resistant to the idea, she planned to ask if a different day would be better or suggest telecommuting just once or twice a month, but her boss was thrilled with the work accomplished and agreed to the idea right away.