Working Across Time Zones Can be Tough Heres How to Manage.

Collaborating in a remote team spanning across different time zones can be a huge challenge. Most teams experience delays in communication hindering the progress or deployment of a product. This is foundational to working in a distributed team spread across time zones where quick check-ins aren’t feasible. The best way to be mindful of different time zones is to disregard time entirely and rely on asynchronous communication. By setting a clear expectation that communication won’t happen in real-time, you can take the pressure of people in different time zones to be “on-call”. So usually, on most teams, there are going to be one or two hours of overlap that you can have and really prioritize that time together.

This can make it easier for employees to quickly know what the time difference is for their location. In order for the https://remotemode.net/ company to be effective and at the same time productive, adaptation will be the key to unlocking that potential.

OUR BEST TIPS FOR KEEPING TRACK OF YOUR GLOBAL TEAM’S SCHEDULE

You can invite your team members to join a private group or a public channel in the team chat app you use — for example, you can name the channel #group-activities, #team_fun_times, or simply, #team-building. There, you can suggest interesting team activities and play fun team-building games designed for virtual team settings. Just make sure that the timing for these activities works for the schedules of everyone working across time zones involved. Moreover, companies should rethink the overall effectiveness of each meeting. It’s a good practice to schedule the meetings only for the exchange of information that can’t be communicated over a team chat app, a document, an email, or a memo. Sure, a team brainstorming session is most effective over a video conference, however, a general weekly update doesn’t necessarily require a 5 a.m.

Share calendars by team, share calendars by organization, by individuals. For instance, we like to use Google Calendar and add the holidays of people around the company. When compared against the benefits, the downsides of working across several time zones are minor inconveniences. This is proven by the fact that an increasing number of businesses are electing to work remotely, with Blueface research estimating that remote work would rival office labour by 2025.

Remote Work Tips

Diversity and inclusion drive innovation and positively impact overall business targets within remote companies that span across time zones. Understandably, this approach largely supports innovation and ultimately leads to more profit in the long run. In fact, one prediction by Gartner shows that 75% of companies employing diverse decision-making teams can expect to outperform their business objectives in 2022. Moreover, one McKinsey study found that the more ethnically and racially diverse companies outperform their less diverse peers by 36% when it comes to financial targets. Splitting your hourly schedule around your team’s timezones allows you to be more available for meetings or quick communication with your international colleagues without ignoring the colleagues in your office.

Rather than settling for local talent, remote workers provide your firm with access to the top people in the world, regardless of where they are located. A complete remote organisation cannot rely on many of these shared experiences and physical venues to help create our culture as a totally distributed organisation. It is necessary to create a culture that prioritises your values and requires every team member to understand and uphold them. A remote team’s culture is conveyed in what you think and demonstrated in how you behave every day . The post outlines how to build an effective time zone agnostic team as a company leader, people manager, colleague, and as a geographically remote person. Building an asynchronous culture can seem intimidating but you’ll need to if you plan to work across time zones.

Common challenges of managing remote team members across different time zones

The actual time difference poses one of the biggest barriers to effective communication across distributed teams. Although it can get challenging at times to manage a geographically dispersed team, there are still many more benefits to the approach. And this is particularly why we’re seeing a consistent increase in the number of companies employing globally. Let’s break down all the benefits of working across time zones to get a better understanding of the trend. Cloud-based technology allowed a number of industries to adopt some form of remote work model. Naturally, organizations jumped at the opportunity to select from a global pool of talent which is, essentially, the key factor that led to the formation of teams that span across different time zones.

Teams employing a globally distributed workforce should pay special attention to learning and optimizing for different cultural specifics. Your employees’ communication styles, collaboration methods, and work schedules are largely impacted by their cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds. Consider making a record of all culture-specific holidays to make sure no meetings or group work sessions are scheduled around those dates. With all the apps and tools available, the time zone difference can create plenty of confusion among employees working across time zones.