Building Relationships For Teams Working Across Time Zones Workplaceless

When you have a colleague in Portugal and another in India, it’s harder to keep track of time. Additionally, team members can find it harder to collaborate in an asynchronous environment, and it can take a while for them to adjust. Moreover, scheduling meetings can be difficult, inconveniencing those who have to attend, especially early in the morning or late in the evening. Now my 10th and last tip for today is even when we’re working with global teams, don’t forget to meet face-to-face every once in a while.

Building an internal wiki that documents best practices and processes is critical, and there are a world of tools out there to help including Notion, Confluence, and even Google Drive. If the issue is complex or there are dependencies involved, you might find yourself drafting a paragraph (or two) and editing your message for clarity and tone that can get lost in translation. That might not be enough to schedule meetings across a number of time zones, but it’s a quick way to figure out if you’re ok to call your boss at 6 p.m. David Fullerton had to overcome the communication hurdle when he was growing the Stack Exchange team.

A Software Engineer’s Guide to Working Across Time Zones

If you frequently change schedules for time-sensitive yet repetitive tasks, consider offloading them to AI instead. Automated systems can handle tedious matters like appointment scheduling, time recording, email sorting, https://remotemode.net/ and project tracking. As for freelancers, follow time zones that benefit your clients. Making adjustments on your end will make you look professional and gracious, leaving your partners with a positive impression of you.

Synchronous communication, or real-time communication between teams, is still necessary for team development, bonding, brainstorming, and celebrating project achievements. Christine leads marketing operations at Arc, where her areas of expertise include marketing strategy, remote management, cross-cultural management, and strategic communications. Eastern Standard Time (EST) covers the states in the eastern part of North America and runs from Maine to Florida, while Central Standard Time (CST) includes Texas up to Montana. Mountain Standard Time (MST) spans Utah’s Rocky Mountains all the way over to Arizona, and Pacific Standard Time (PST) includes California and Nevada to Washington State.

Know your remote team’s working hours

If a team member is waiting to review content being created on another coast, managers should consider shifting deadlines that ensure everyone’s time is used effectively. If your daily tasks involve managing a remote team, consider creating a team-wide schedule to follow. As much as you’d want to accommodate them, your workers might not get much done if they rarely work the same schedule. If you’ve been working the same shift throughout your career, take this chance to overhaul your routine.

Asynchronous collaboration is the default workflow globally distributed teams turn to to optimize their processes and overall culture. This is not surprising, given that the flexibility of asynchronous collaboration represents the ideal response to the challenges of working across time zones. As much as it’s important to keep a strong bond between remote coworkers through continual communication and real-time collaboration, there’s also a strong case for the asynchronous, no-distraction work. This is especially true for creative work that requires maximum focus. We’re familiar with the premise that it takes around 25 minutes to resume your workflow flow after an interruption.

Make sure no one gets left out when planning a meeting across different time zones

Even the most introverted remote workers need social interaction, humans just aren’t designed for solitude. 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. Companies have the luxury of leaning into shared experiences and physical venues when developing a culture in an office-based workplace. It’s nearly hard to arrange everyone to meet at the same time without inconveniencing someone if you don’t have team members working in overlapping time zones. One person will have to regularly get up too early or stay online too late.

• When working with teams in different time zones, the most important thing to remember is to be mindful, empathic, and courteous.
• Jeff Atwood found that when he started Stack Overflow programming on his own turned into a lonely job.
• For freelancers and anyone working remotely, there are many challenges for working with clients or coworkers in different time zones.
• Like I mentioned above, you want to avoid sending someone a meeting invite and having it pop up for them on a Saturday, or on a national holiday in the country where they live.
• When teams work in different time zones, someone can always be ready to tackle issues or make progress, meaning less downtime.
• We’ll also show you some of the key tips to take into account to be more aware of the experiences of remote employees.

“One danger of my job, as a columnist who works in California, is a feeling of disconnection from the mother ship in New York,” writes technology columnist Farhad Manjoo. The ability to hand off work is a productivity benefit, but it’s also motivator since you know you must accomplish https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ tasks so you can hand them off to co-workers at day’s end. “It puts a little pressure on you to get your work done,” says TechCrunch’s Russell. And that’s nice—we all need human interaction, and it’s great that you can still get that without being in the same room.

GET ALL THE BEST REMOTE WORKING TIPS

Explain that you have a particular schedule in order to function as productively as possible, and your available hours for meetings are X, Y and Z. Getting familiar with the map can help you visualize time zones before you even get to World Time Buddy in your browser (but, we still recommend using World Time Buddy to perfect your calculations). One time, when we were working remotely and traveling as freelancers in Hanoi, Vietnam, Dan had a cross-time-zone meeting with clients in the US, Australia and somewhere else as well.

Remember to also take advantage of video conferencing tools like Zoom or Google Meet for face-to-face communication, which can help build rapport and trust among team members. One of the most significant challenges of working in a different time zone is the potential for communication barriers. When your colleagues or clients are asleep while you’re awake, it can be difficult to get the information you need or to convey your own ideas effectively.

It May Be a Benefit to Change Your Email Signature To Reflect Your Flexible Work Schedule

Maybe you’re headquartered in Sydney but work with contractors around the globe. Or maybe you’re fully distributed, with teammates on every continent around the world. The most time-saving tool that I feel recommending here is Loom.