Q: You recently spent a day working from home, and you can’t believe how much you accomplished. How do you persuade your boss to permit this arrangement on a more permanent basis?

A: It may not be easy. Jeff Davidson, president of the Breathing Space Institute, a time management consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said that unless your boss already managed a number of employees who worked from home, he probably would not embrace your suggestion right away.

“Corporate cultures are steeped in ritual,” he said. “If working from home isn’t part of that ritual, you need to deal with the fact that it may take time to get what you want.”

Q: How do you know if working from home is right for you?

A: The arrangement obviously doesn’t fit every job. If you operate heavy machinery or work in a laboratory, fulfiling day-to-day responsibilities outside the workplace may be hard. Sales, management and other positions that require face-to-face interaction with other people may also prove challenging if you’re home alone.

Personality is a factor, too. Dean Simpson, programme manager for economic services at the Wake County human services department in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that only the most disciplined and organised employees benefited from working at home. “If you are easily distracted or you are someone who procrastinates, working all by yourself isn’t the best kind of work setting,” she said. Simpson, who oversees 19 telecommuting workers and 148 employees in the office, said that she would be a “terrible” candidate because she would “do things like mow grass and wash clothes all day.”

Q: Why do people ask to work from home?

A: Employees may see working from home as a solution to many difficult situations. Intolerable commutes, health problems and child care issues all rank high on this list. Some people want to get away from an office that’s too loud and boisterous.

Whatever the reason, employees must be careful how they phrase their requests. Rita Mace Walston, executive director of the Telework Consortium, an advocacy group in Herndon, Virginia, said that many companies considered working at home a privilege, not a right, and that employees should make their requests respectfully, without a sense of entitlement.

And characterising the office as unruly may not be wise, Walston said, because a boss could interpret this as an attack on the atmosphere he had created. “Any time you complain about the workplace environment, you’re putting yourself in pretty serious danger,” she said. “Instead, talk about work-life balance, or your state of mind from a creativity standpoint. This will get you farther in the long run.”

Q: Should you go to the boss with a formal proposal?

A: It certainly can’t hurt. Pete Drozdoff, vice president for marketing at SureWest Communications, a telecommunications company in Roseville, California, says that a proposal offers a great way to summarise your goals and to explain how you planned to make working from home a success.

These documents should include detailed information about the physical layout of the home office, how you plan to be accessible and methods for evaluating productivity.

Proposals should also include a timetable; Drozdoff says gradual transitions and pilot programmes are the best way to make bosses comfortable with change.

Diana Gil-Osorio, director of public relations at the Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay, California, learned this in July, when she submitted a proposal to work from her apartment in San Francisco, 30 miles away. The proposal stated that Gil-Osorio would convert a second bedroom into an office and that she would continue to spend at least two days a week in Half Moon Bay for meetings. Her bosses accepted on the spot.

“They were very cool about it,” she said, noting that her old workspace at the hotel is now shared by two other employees. “What they liked was that the move wasn’t all or nothing, and that one simple change seemed to benefit everyone.”

Q: Are there any downsides to working from home?

A: Like any decision in the workplace, the choice to telecommute has its risks. Lisa A. Mainiero, co-author of The Opt-Out Revolt: Why People Are Leaving Companies to Create Kaleidoscope Careers (Davies-Black Publishing, 2006), said that many employees feared that if they removed themselves from the day-to-day office environment, they might be passed over when it was time for raises and promotions.

“With many bosses there’s a definite penalty for employees who aren’t in the office every day to show what they can do,” said Mainiero, a management professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut. “You’ve heard the saying, ‘out of sight, out of mind’? This is the modern-day application of that.”

Employees who work at home may also miss out on the everyday activities and banter that make employees feel that they are part of a team. While this camaraderie is secondary to business goals, Holly Ross, director of programmes for the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, a business services provider in San Francisco, said it was an important part of the work experience that could not be found at home. “There’s something about being a few feet away from someone and chatting about last night’s Project Runway episode that you don’t get when you’re alone,” said Ross, who occasionally works from home. “You can have a nice working relationship if you work remotely, but it’s just never the same.”