It used to be that the men and women who arrived early and stayed late at the office were held up as exemplary employees. “Always at the office” was a phrase that could be spoken with a sense of pride. Now, as more and more workers telecommute, that paradigm is starting to shift, writes Cindy Krischer Goodman for Philly.com. 

Close to half of the country’s workforce now have jobs that are compatible with working from home at least part-time. Around 25 percent of office workers already telecommute. Nearly 90 percent have expressed interest in working from home. 

More and more companies are also changing how they measure success in the workplace, replacing old metrics with modern results-focused techniques. Companies aren’t really interested in how many hours you worked last week. They just want you to deliver.

That shift may end up presenting an existential threat to the “office way” of organizing employees, for the office is fundamentally about managing employee time. 

While telecommuters are unlikely to ever represent 100 percent of any company, many Fortune 1000 companies are accommodating a growing number. They see it as a great way to save on resources and attract younger talent (many Millennials say they have considered taking a pay cut in order to work from home).

It isn’t always an easy cultural transition for a company.  Managers complain that employees telecommute too frequently. Employees point out that managers make them feel guilty for working from home instead of coming into the office.

But the truth is most workers already do some amount of telecommuting each day when they return home and catch up on emails after dinner. To some extent, “always at the office” has been replaced by “always sending 9pm emails.”

Mark Neuberger, a Foley & Lardner employment attorney, says the best thing for both parties is to develop clear policy guidelines.

“It helps the manager and the people working from home know what they should be doing and not doing,” he said in the article, adding that official policies can be helpful with recruiting. “People like to see a company is open to the possibility.”

Read the complete analysis of this at Philly.com here.