How do you start your working day? By adding your car to the horrendous traffic on the roads? By squeezing your body onto crowded, expensive, unreliable public transport? Now ask yourself, ‘Has the time come to consider teleworking?’

On average in the UK we spend 7.5 weeks a year commuting to and from work. If we were to spend just one day a week working from home we’d claw back an astonishing 10 days a year.

It’s estimated that about 2 million people telework in the UK. Teleworking or telecommuting is a broad term that includes home-based workers, people working ‘on the road’ (such as sales reps), some of the self-employed and people working in telecentres or telecottages (purpose-built centres). What all these groups have in common is that information and communication technology is used to enable work to be done away from the usual work environment.

It's easy to think of the benefits of teleworking: No battling the traffic. Reduced travelling costs. More time with the children. More productivity at work without the distractions of meetings or interruptions. Less stress.

But can be difficult to talk your boss into letting you work from home. Here are some tips on how to make your case to your boss:

1. Be honest with yourself.
Some people, jobs and tasks are not suitable for teleworking. Assess yourself, your working habits and your job (or parts of your job) and work out whether teleworking is a viable option for you.

2. Write a proposal outlining the business, personal and professional benefits for you teleworking.
You could point out that you'll be able to produce more work by knocking off the 90-minute round-trip commute. Surveys suggest that productivity can increase by between 10 and 40 per cent after teleworking is introduced. You could indicate that you'd be willing to work late on a difficult project if you were given the option of working from home some of the time.

Your goal is to highlight the advantages to your company. Consider building in a review period so that you and your boss can assess how well you new way of working is going.

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Far from the madding crowd