Recently, BNET looked into ways of facilitating team collaboration when some members work in the office and others are remote. The piece points on some common communication and collaboration hiccups between the two camps.

Among them, remote workers feel like they only hear from the office when there’s a problem, all their communication is funneled through a manager, they’re missing small talk, and resent getting group emails about donuts or bagels in the kitchen. For those in the office, the complaints range from resenting the stay-at-home workers, having to use electronic communications with others in the office simply to keep remote workers in the loop, getting extra work because they’re in the office, and feeling like managers trust them less.

But this isn’t how it has to be. With better collaboration and communication, you can eliminate friction between remote and officer team members. Here are some tips:

- Make it easy for remote employees to get to know their office team workers. Incorporate interactive exercises during conference calls that foster collaboration between office and remote workers.

- During long conference calls, office workers may resent the remote workers, who they imagine have more freedom to tune out. Engage the remote workers specifically during the call, so office workers don’t feel like they’re getting a free ride.

- Keep office perks fair. If you treat office workers to free pizza because of a job well done, send a gift card to remote workers. These little gestures help keep the teams feel more connected and less like one or the other has the advantage.

- Encourage remote and office workers to communicate. This can be as simple as syncing their Outlooks so both are aware of the other’s calendar and updates to shared documents. This prevents any unwelcome surprises, which seem to cause more problems when they come from someone who doesn’t work in the same building.