Fentress Blog

I have been a manager of teleworkers for over 30 years. As a gross generalization, here is what I have observed: 50% of the employees do just as well teleworking as they would in an office environment. 25% of the employees excel – something about the autonomy of telework and their ability to...

With the summer winding down and fall and winter approaching, you may be wondering what it’s going to cost to heat your home office. Although difficult to predict, a report called Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides a glimpse of projected...

Work-life balance may seem like a fairly modern concept. But the truth is that employees have been fighting for work-life balance for many, many years. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, when manufacturing was the primary industry, the focus was on reducing the number of hours worked as the average...

The COVID behavioral experiment is one that will certainly be analyzed for years to come. Although it was not conducted intentionally, individual responses to COVID have become a laboratory for studies and observations on human behavior, interactions, personality traits, and societal norms. As a...

I recently read about an interesting trend that has gained steam in the U.S. during the COVID pandemic - the rise of “Zoom towns.” The term is a take on “boom towns” – those population centers that sprung up as a result of the new economic opportunities brought about by the Industrial Revolution....