Zoom competitor RingCentral is considering making it easier for companies to manage a workforce split between returning to the office and staying remote

Companies like Twitter and Nationwide are all allowing some or all of their workforce to work remotely full-time.
That presents new challenges, including how to even out potential discrepancies between those employees that will return to the office and those that need to remain remote. 
Zoom competitor RingCentral is eyeing new features that could enhance nonverbal communication cues for those who will continue to attend meetings virtually. 
Among them is a timer that would indicate how long it's been since an attendee has talked, according to Michael Peachey, RingCentral's vice president of customer experience.
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Many C-suite executives were surprised just how efficient and successful their organizations have been in pivoting all their employees to remote work nearly overnight.
But the real challenge looms ahead.
As companies prepare to navigate a post-pandemic environment, the reality is setting in that workforces are almost certain to be bifurcated between those who stay remote and those who can return to the office.
Twitter, for example, told its employees that they can permanently work remotely . Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman told Bloomberg that the company is also unlikely to require employees to go to the office anytime soon.
And Nationwide already made moves to pivot roughly 30% of its workers to remote work full-time — after the insurance giant's CEO Kirt Walker had told Business Insider that the number could rise as high as 50%. 
Those set-ups come with a slew of new issues that must be addressed, many that firms of all sizes have never had to deal with.
Among those is the fact the "when you get into that hybrid world … it's not a level playing field anymore," according to Michael Peachey, vice president of customer experience at workplace collaboration tool provider RingCentral. 
"From an organizational standpoint, all of your people are not contributing at their highest. The people who are remote are at a disadvantage," he told Business Insider. 
Career paths could look wildly different as managers strive to balance the two groups. Offices will, of course, change to accommodate new social distancing guidelines .
And the meetings we were all accustomed to holding and attending back before the outbreak occurred could be nonexistent in this new era.
Timers, blurred screens, and enlarged images 
One equalizer that many companies are banking on is the use of digital tools that can at least begin to bridge the gap between the virtual and the physical world.
At RingCentral, a competitor to companies like Zoom and Cisco, Peachey's team is exploring features they can add that would help empower remote workers to contribute at the same level of those who will be in the office....