I recently discussed remote work strategies with our IT partner, Heinan Landa of Optimal Networks.

Lots of people have shared work from home productivity tips, but I invite you to think beyond "surviving" remote work, and instead use this time to gain a more enduring productivity advantage. We know from experience that productivity soars when you unshackle it from the synchronized everyone-in-one-place-at-one-time working formula. (But admittedly, your mileage may vary depending on who else is home with you.)

Covid-19 suddenly increased attention on remote work, and many employers and local governments are strongly encouraging it. But because remote work is still uncomfortable for some managers, I wanted to share a few thoughts we learned in the past 18 years.

Last month, my company held its first in-person, all-staff meeting in two years. We're a virtual company -- all 15 of us work from our own homes. There was no real reason for us to have a meeting. All our important work is handled on short conference calls, but we thought it might be nice for everyone to meet each other, in many cases for the first time.

My previous office was straight out of Office Space -- a grey office of cubicles, key-cards, and strict scheduling, where the constant murmur of other voices drifted through to break up the silence. It was a big, prestigious company. At Staffing Advisors, everyone in our company works from home. There's no other option (by design) -- we don't even have a central office to report to.

From time to time, all of us feel like we’re asked to do the impossible at work. But few work environments are designed to help employees actually succeed when faced with those daunting situations.

Fortunately, we can all learn from the rare organizations that have figured out how to regularly achieve the impossible — without burning out their team or setting people up to fail.

Some people love to tell stories of dumb things candidates do. Some people love to collect idiotic phrases from cover letters. Some people love to dwell on the details of why someone gave a terrible interview.

It is often said that people are hired for skills but fired for fit. But what is fit, and how can it be determined before making a hire? Definitions abound, but I think fit is partly about personal values and partly about "how we like to do things around here."