4 Best Practices For Managing Teams Across Time Zones

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. Remote collaboration is difficult and productivity can halt if digital tools fail. Read our guide on remote collaboration to learn how to overcome these challenges. When everyone lives in different time zones, writing, planning, and documentation tend to become the default behavior for remote employees. This means people who were offline can dive into documentation to catch up, rather than having to wait for answers.

The already limited communication opportunities leave no room for staff to share what they’re working on, talk about ideas, or future plans. This can leave employees feeling their work is being overlooked, and potentially affect their career advancement as it doesn’t allow enough insight into their effort and contribution. The actual time difference poses one of the biggest barriers to effective communication across distributed teams. 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. Still, as much as it might be pretty seamless for a tech company to adjust their operations to working across time zones, for some industries and teams, this practice is simply not viable.

Know your remote team’s working hours

One of the best things about Help Scout is that they publish how they work and their post on how to build a globally remote team that really works is a great example. Ideally, your company will set up Google Drive, Dropbox, or whatever file-sharing system you use so files are automatically accessible to the entire company. If they can’t access the file, they’ll have to wait for you to be online again. This is why study after study after study has shown remote workers to be more productive than their in-office colleagues. Traditionally companies have relegated themselves to hiring people who live within commuting distance of their offices or at most, the same time zone. Companies are increasingly striving to measure remote work sustainability, but it’s not an easy feat.

Google calendar has a setting that you can choose your home time zone and then appointments will always be scheduled in that time zone unless you choose otherwise. It will help if you switch meeting times weekly and make them more convenient for people worldwide to prevent burnout in one employee. Perhaps you can have two different meetings on one day at two different times so everybody can get a chance to participate.

How teams can best manage working across time zones

This is not surprising, given that the flexibility of asynchronous collaboration represents the ideal response to the challenges of working across time zones. This shared document can live in a project management tool or document storage location for the whole team to reference as needed. Ensure you are open to dealing with your work hours and controls with your distributed team, whether you are working remotely, in-office, or in a global office outside your main company headquarters.

An inside look at the meeting ground rules used internally by Fellow.app, the top-rated meeting productivity software company. We’ll email you 1-3 times per week—and never share your information. You might find that there’s no perfect time for your team, but at least you’ll find options that aren’t excruciating. Plus, you can add the correct time to your calendar in just a click, if you’d like. His solution was to have a coding partner, someone he’d bounce ideas off of and check in with about project progress.

Pro: You can work with the most talented people

I spent a week in Florida in February collecting seashells, eating the best doughnuts in existence, and reading at least a book a day. I also put in a few hours each afternoon writing and scheduling client appointments (for after my vacation). Now I’ll be frank, I don’t like editing on a deadline because there’s only so much editing a girl can do.

If you hold regular meetings across time zones, try to rotate meetings times to avoid prioritising certain locations. This is foundational to working in a distributed team spread across time zones where quick check-ins aren’t https://remotemode.net/ feasible. Teams that work across multiple time zones can’t rely on real-time communication. There’s no room to ask clarifying questions and you don’t have the luxury of reading a person’s facial expressions or tone of voice.

USE TOOLS FOR ASYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATION

You can use the tools and practices that are the best fit for your organization and make working across time zones a pleasurable experience for everybody. Therefore, it’s reasonable to switch meeting schedules every month or quarter. This ensures that no single team is forced to make constant sacrifices to stay linked. It may also cause everyone to plan a meeting across time zones when they’re the ones working unusual hours. By the time they read your second message and take action, an entire day (or more!) could have passed without them doing anything.