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.