Working Across Time Zones: Pros, Cons, and Best Practices
| On Aug23,2023Content
- Communicate clearly about timezone boundaries with your team.
- Best practices for working across time zones
- Con: There’s less motivation to stay connected
- Schedule less urgent emails to send at a time where international teammates are active.
- Use Time Zone Converters
- Con: There’s no constant collaboration
After all, having employees working in different time zones is the equivalent of offering your organization a 24-hour workplace — with the top talent on the planet. Without the need for overtime or late-night shifts, teams can collaborate to fulfill deadlines. Employees in the one-time zone can hand over half-finished projects to peers in another time zone to finish. Slack is a great asynchronous communication tool used by many companies of all sizes.
- “When there were 4 people, everyone knew everything. When there are 75 people, that no longer scales,” he says.
- You’ll need to set up communication protocols to monitor these conversations during your working hours.
- I’ve written articles from a hammock in Indonesia and brainstormed tips from the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, and I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without learning how to make time zones work for me.
- That’s why you need a complete guide to successfully working across multiple timezones like the one you’ve landed on.
Instead, experiment with different shifts to keep the conversation flowing between teams. Options could include one or more days per week on which employees work a half-day in the office, then remotely at night or early in the morning. This means their time is equally distributed between their own office’s time zone and another team’s time zone.
Communicate clearly about timezone boundaries with your team.
Simply enter your team’s current locations, and these calculators will calculate the best times to meet (and even show local holidays being observed). Trello, Basecamp, and Asana are project management tools that keep track of what everyone is working on as it progresses through the pipeline. Any team looking to boost remote cooperation while working should invest in one. There are simply too many project management apps available on the market to pick just one to feature. Each has distinct features and benefits, so you can compare a few to see what fits your needs best. Just imagine a chatroom with all the features of texting and emailing available today and you’ll have Slack.
And there is a great app that one of the buffer developers developed called timezone.io. And that actually visually shows on one screen where all of your teammates are in the world and their time zone, very, very good-looking tool. So when you do have meetings or things that the team needs to know about, that everybody inputs that time into a shared calendar, then the time https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ zone conversions are automatically done. And that just helps minimize some of the mistakes that we can make when we’re scheduling time. 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. And one suggestion that I’ll make is in that overlap time, try to spend time on video together.
Best practices for working across time zones
It’s a simple, text-based world clock provides an at-a-glance update. No matter how independently you can work, and how hard you try to stay connected, you won’t be in the flow of what everyone’s doing unless you have a team chat tool. “At TechCrunch and The Next Web, having a central point of contact is critical,” says Russell. “Tools like Slack, Convo and HipChat make that possible in a way that it never really was a few years ago.” It makes scheduling meetings difficult, but we can also hand off work to keep the wheels turning 24/7.
Whether you want to organize days when everyone is working on similar projects or just remind everyone when it’s a special birthday or anniversary, Google calendar is a good way to keep everyone on the same page. For collaboration, you can share your screen with just the click of a button and also share control of the mouse. People can make the choice to have their cameras and microphones on or off depending on the situation. During the pandemic, Zoom became one of the most popular tools for companies almost overnight. The user-friendly interface is simple to download and easy to get started with minimal effort.
Con: There’s less motivation to stay connected
It’s likely that someone on the team will be inconvenienced by the time that a meeting is scheduled. Whether they have to get up early or stay at work late or even get up in the middle of the night, someone will suffer. If you’re working with a remote team, it might be even easier to give the time of the meeting in Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. Then, everyone who is attending the meeting will convert to their own time zone.
- Once you and your team establish timezones boundaries and preferred work hours, respect them.
- Even though your team isn’t together physically, it’s your job to treat them as though they are.
- It’s a simple, text-based world clock provides an at-a-glance update.
- When asking something or for something or setting a deadline, take into account your colleague’s time zone and make sure your request is reasonable not only for you but for all others and their time zones involved.
- Specifically, look for online time clock apps where you can set specific timeframes for employees to clock in and out within their scheduled work hours.
- Microsoft Office is one of the most popular software programs utilized by offices and companies around the world.