This can be a real challenge with mixed teams. Remote workers often complain that their in-office team members have a leg up due to more accessible communication, collaboration, and relationship building.

I was at a company that tried to mitigate this by forcing in-office employees to do their meetings and collaboration digitally even if they were right next to each other. It wasn’t fun. We ended up having clandestine meetings and being worried about being caught talking to each other about work, as ridiculous as it sounds. There was even some question about whether we were allowed to go to lunch together because it might make the remote employees excluded, so we’d have to eat lunch secretly together. Not a great solution.

Unfortunately it’s a difficult topic because it requires a tacit admission that remote work has some disadvantages. Forcing everyone remote is the brute-force solution, but giving up those in-person benefits for the sake of leveling the playing field isn’t great for the company or team.