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Or in overlapping time zones, and copy and paste it onto a truly distributed team. Once everyone’s set and communicated their working hours, make sure you’re respecting them! This respect is so key to maintaining work-life balance across time zones, and making sure that everyone is communicating in a productive way. Don’t forget that just because meetings are in a different time zone doesn’t mean your distributed employees shouldn’t get the same perks as employees in HQ. If you’re catering lunch for a lunch and learn in the office, consider sending distributed employees gift cards or letting them expense whatever mealtime it is in their time zone during that meeting. Collaborating in a remote team spanning across different time zones can be a huge challenge.
This is probably the most obvious challenge of working across multiple time zones, and rightfully so. It can get overwhelming trying to set up a time that works for the entire team. In this article, you’ll learn about the benefits and challenges of working across time zones, as well as the best practices you need to follow. It’s easy enough to understand time zones where you live, but if you’re working in a remote team spread across the world, it gets harder to remember what time it is for your team members. The name “instant” suggest live synchronous communication, but asynchronous communication is still a big part of using instant messaging tools like Slack, MS Teams, and Flock.
Be mindful of international employees when scheduling meetings.
Being part of a global team comes with a host of advantages—from learning from each other’s culture to numerous cross-learning opportunities. However, having colleagues in all time zones makes it difficult to keep track of the time and create boundaries. In this blog, I will https://remotemode.net/ talk about a few ways in which you can manage communications with colleagues in different parts of the world, making working across multiple time zones easier. The actual time difference between co-workers is a significant barrier to effective real-time communication.
- It covers all the essential elements including responsibilities, skills, qualifications, and employee benefits.
- Asynchronous communication should be the norm for remote teams, especially those with personnel in multiple time zones.
- Similarly, invite your teammates to discuss their own work hours and boundaries so that way you all are familiar with the different timezones your everyone is working within.
Other moments, like grabbing lunch with colleagues, are a great way to break up the day. Teams can help enable distributed employees by providing a discretionary budget for tech like noise-canceling headphones, microphones, high-quality laptops with cameras, and high-speed Internet access. Having the right kind of gear empowers remote employees to actively participate in the conversation—to literally be seen and heard. A remote worker must be a self-starter who can continue working without someone watching them. They must manage their time and energy wisely, which can be challenging when working from home. Synchronous communication, or real-time communication between teams, is still necessary for team development, bonding, brainstorming, and celebrating project achievements.
Challenges of working remotely across time zones
If you want to learn more about team agreements, then go back to episode number 42. One of the items in the team agreement is to always talk in one time zone. So pick one time zone and then just have the entire team talk in that time zone. Create a Countdown Timer that counts down in seconds, minutes, hours and days to any date, with time zone support. It’s important to set clear working hours to create a sustainable working schedule for yourself and your team.
One of the first mistakes you may make when working remotely from home is to allow all of your favorite (or least favorite) items in the house to distract you. Hence, you should try to separate the place where you work from a relatively quiet place in your home. Messages are clear and easy to grasp at a glance with just one simple emoji. These are also useful when your teammates don’t all speak the same language. Everyone will have everything they need to get up and running as soon as they sign in for the day, regardless of what time it is.
Most Americans don’t closely follow professional or college sports
“That, as well as everyone setting their working hours and turning off notifications outside of those hours, can really help to create and maintain a healthy work environment,” he said. Expecting your teammates to be „always-on” doesn’t create the best culture and might make them feel disrespected. So, to avoid this, minimize the messages you send after hours and be patient if you don’t immediately get a response back. Odds are, a great teammate will get back to you when they begin working the next day. Even after having an initial conversation, you should also speak up if you’re having issues attending many meetings in multiple timezones. Likewise, you should also encourage colleagues to communicate when they’re running into timezone blockers.
The best job for you might not be in your hometown, and you might work better when you aren’t shackled to a 9-to-5 workday. And that’s ok on a distributed team, as long as you can manage the time shift. Your team will likely get more done, and you’ll be able to provide better support for your customers—but you’ll also need to figure out how to make the world feel a bit smaller.
What types of teams are likely to work across time zones?
Not to mention that if all time zones are covered, then the company can serve its customers 24/7 without the need for late-night shifts. By embracing different time zones, you can build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Research from McKinsey https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ found that ethnically and racially diverse companies outperform their less diverse peers by 36% when it comes to financial metrics. When you don’t need to consider time zones, you can attract and hire the best talent regardless of location.
