If you're not working from home this week, you should be; Monday marked the kickoff of National Telework Week, five days devoted to encouraging workers to stay home, boosting productivity for their employers while reducing energy and commute costs.

If each of the 41 million Americans who have telework-compatible jobs worked at home one day this week, the savings could be significant. According to research conducted by the Telework Research Network, such a result would not only cut about 423,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions, it would also reduce commute costs by $494 million, reduce our oil appetite by 2.3 million barrels of oil and save $93 million in costs from traffic accidents.

Although 14,000 people have already signed the pledge to work at home at least one day this week, research we published earlier this month in the State of Green Business report found that there are about 8.5 million households in the U.S. where at least one worker telecommutes at least three days a week.

[Disclosure: The GreenBiz editorial staff is currently 100 percent telecommuting, while we move offices in Oakland. On a (relatively) cold, rainy day like today, it is a blessing in innumerable ways.]

"The savings above are just the tip of the iceberg," Kate Lister, principal researcher of the Telework Research Network, said in a statement. "If you add the many employer, employee and community benefits, once-weekly telework could save the nation $350 billion a year and potentially eliminate our oil imports from both Libya and Kuwait."

There are benefits aplenty to a comprehensive telework program, going far beyond killing commute times and saving on oil costs. The TRN's Telework Savings Calculator averages the savings companies earn from telework programs and finds that an employee staying home one day per week saves about $6,500 per year.

Similar research, which we covered last year, found that companies that let 100 of their employees telecommute half-time saved $10,000 a year. And research going all the way back to 2005 found that, far from slacking off, teleworkers work longer hours -- which was complemented by findings last year that flex-time workers add two extra days to their workweek, i.e. working the equivalent of 56 hours per week over a normal 40-hour week.

While boosting productivity and cutting office, real estate and employee costs is certainly a boon, there are of course some small downsides to telework, most of which stem from not being able to shut your office door at the end of the day and leave work behind.

I'm curious to know: How many of you work from home part- or full-time, and what have your experiences been?

_{Image CC-licensed by Craig Cloutier.}