9 Lessons Learned By Working Remote In A Different Time Zone

When you’ve decided on a slot, you can email all the participants and invite them to your event. On Slack, for example, if you set your time zone, other users will be able to see your local time when they interact with you. They’ll also get notified if they’re reaching out to you outside of office hours, which can be helpful if you don’t care for your phone buzzing in the middle of the night. You can do this on the web by clicking on your profile picture , then choosing Edit profile. If you’re on mobile, select You, View profile, then Edit profile. Both Google Calendar and Apple Calendar let you assign time zones when you create new events.

• This is especially true for creative work that requires maximum focus.
• In this guest post, Jessica Day of Dialpad offers effective strategies for working with teams in different time zones.
• You can do this on the web by clicking on your profile picture , then choosing Edit profile.
• Clients can receive immediate feedback without any language barriers or cultural differences.
• Make it available any time for employees to access, obtain the latest information and update.
• For example, evaluate the duration and size of typical meetings.

Certain countries refrain from using a given scheme with its time standard unchanged. For example, Iceland, Russia, Turkey, China, Japan, and India don’t follow such trends. Being up front helps co-workers know what kind of time commitment you’re looking from them. This means that if one team member works while another is sleeping, it does not mean they can’t communicate or collaborate with each other effectively . An enormous amount of effort is needed to overcome this particular downside of global remote work. Tools like Loom and PingPong let you record video messages of yourself, your screen, or both.

Record Meetings And Key Information

Top 10 Tips on How to Hire Back-End Developers in 2022 With market competitiveness at an all-time high, back-end teams are being challenged to provide solid solutions that improve efficiency… Be the first to read our tips and tricks for business owners and other professionals. A well-managed global institution is more liable to gain industry benefits as they receive exposure in several markets and perspective to understand potential customers from different corners of the world. Globalization can bring new success to your organization as it is a proven fact that diversity helps innovate unique ideas and adds different perspectives to your project. “Gartner predicts that by 2022, 75 percent of businesses with diverse frontline decision-makers will exceed their financial targets,” says HubSpot in an article.

Liz joined CIA Insurance and Risk Management in 2018, bringing years of client experience from the technology industry to the team. When away from the office, Ashley enjoys ballroom dancing and was on the MSU competitive ballroom dance team. She enjoys traveling, spending time with friends and family, going to red wings games, and cheering on the Spartans. Not only is Melissa new to CIA, but also to the state of Michigan. She brings with her over ten years of working within Client Relations, and is very excited to bring this experience to the company.

It is therefore a good practice for a company to inform their employees prior to hiring that they will be required to work overlapping hours to ensure the company runs smoothly. It also prepares the team mentally and helps them to divide, manage their workload effectively knowing time overlap is a requirement to keep the company moving forward. Asynchronous (or ‘non-synchronized’ work) can seem daunting at first. But it’s actually a very smart workaround that offers you continuous productivity. One team member goes off shift, passes the baton to the next team member – and the race goes on. Lags in communication can easily be handled via video or a shared communication platform.

Benefits Of Working Across Time Zones

Boundaries work both ways when it comes to remote international teams. Your employees need to understand what you expect of them on a day-to-day basis. But it’s also critical that you make time to understand what they can manage. Remote employees can feel pressure to say yes to everything they’re invited to, regardless of how busy they are. Spell out your location in introductions, or speak up when a team is setting up recurring meetings.

Schedule regular virtual meetings with your employees to review their work progress and stay connected. It is ideal to use an exclusive communication platform modified for your organization’s employees. By embracing virtual project management and meeting tools like progress tracker and task management software, you can rationalize your overseas communication system.

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. Diverse teams made up of remote team members from around the world, especially in management positions, escape local echo chambers and build truly world-class products. When working with a distributed team, it’s important to understand the differences between sync and async communication, and the extreme importance of asynchronous communication. When you are looking for employees or business partners, it can be tough to find the right person in an industry where ‚who you know‘ is just as important as what you know. By hiring remote workers, you’ll never have to worry about geographical limitations again.

You could opt for full asynchronous work, where there’s almost zero time overlap between team members. It’s better to arrive at an intelligent compromise, where at least some members overlap times. This enables them to communicate in real time and reduce delays in query or response. While it is suggested to decide a fixed day and time for meetings to avoid the confusion of complex schedule updates. The advancement in technology has enabled organizations to hire remotely, as it no longer requires their employees to work from the same location or even at the same time.

Schedule Any Meetings During The Times Everyone Can Attend

And it may get everyone to start thinking twice about holding meetings when they’re the one clocking in odd hours. Of course, not everything is best when it comes tocollaborating across multiple time zones. With such a big gap between certain time zones, remote teams will inevitably experience delayed responses and difficulty scheduling meetings. On many HubSpot marketing teams, if we schedule a meeting that requires people in other timezones to wake up early or stay up late, we try to be empathetic to those colleagues in some way. This is another important time management app that is extremely beneficial and can help immensely with the productivity of the team members in a remote environment. This app essentially harvests time that the developers spend on over 70 apps as well as services which include Slack, Github, Zendesk, and Teambook. This tool enables the tracking of time for any specific project task, or a specific client.

For asynchronous collaboration to work, teams need clear processes and guidelines on hand at all times to get a clear direction and understanding of priorities, boundaries, and goals. With the limited opportunities for verbal communication and even virtual meetings across time zones, distributed teams need to rely on written and video records to obtain all the information. Additionally, team members working across time zones can create a shared document with their work schedules highlighting no-contact hours to ensure clear boundaries are being set and respected. You can either check out your team using a detailed user view or a grouped users view depending on your requirements. The app provides a timeline format view of the employee working hours so you can check out how their times overlap with each other.

The Best Remote Work Tools To Use According To Top Distributed Teams

For example, if a Boston-based marketing manager gives a California-based blogger a deadline for „9 a.m. Monday,“ it might be hard to determine whether the deadline was for 9 a.m. Meanwhile, if you’re not working in the same country as your broader team, „don’t be afraid to ask for meetings that are outside of others‘ timezones.“ Can projects and GitHub Actions be used by your non-developer teams? Check out how our Security Team uses GitHub to run the department effortlessly. If you have to maintain certain hours of coverage despite your employees’ locations, split shifts can be an excellent solution.

• My brain likes to convert the wrong direction when I’m dealing with just an hour or two.
• The best is to set expectations and collaborate to understand each other.
• An employee ID is a unique numeric identification code set by your employer.
• Even still, odds are you’ll be working with someone who’s not online at the same time as you.

Similarly, if a hiring manager in California gives a Dublin-based job candidate an interview time without noting EST or PST, the job candidate might log on for a video interview at the wrong time. „If you’re clear about why you can’t work every hour of the day across all timezones, teammates will understand that. Just make sure you propose alternatives,“ says Nataly Kelly, HubSpot’s VP of Localization. While creating processes that allow employees to work in different timezones is logistically beneficial, on a deeper level, it also makes it easier for diverse global talent to join your team. In today’s workplace, diversity breeds new and unique ideas, allows us to look at our campaigns from different points of view, and benefits companies financially. In fact, by 2022, Gartner predicts that 75% of businesses with diverse frontline decision-makers will exceed their financial targets.

Companies Successfully Working Across Time Zones

Therefore, it’s crucial to encourage good, consistent documentation in asynchronous workplace tools, such as Notion, Google Drive, Slack, and project management options like Asana or Trello. 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. If you’re not yet aware of this, writers like to procrastinate. I had to learn with these clients that the due date they requested was the day before in my time zone. With a major time difference, you may have to submit work early or structure your day differently to get work in on time.

For example, if you’re in London and need a report by Monday morning, an employee in California might not deliver that to you until the end of your day. Let us have a look at some of the best ways in which you can effectively manage the timezones for optimizing the productivity of your team. There are ways to combat the difficulties of working across time zones that can be adopted as part of constructing a good working culture as a developer. Encourage team members to also interact informally as far as it’s appropriate to do so. By learning about differences in culture, communication becomes easier and more sincere. Your team also develops a greater sense of camaraderie and mutual support. Figure It Out is a great app for keeping track of time zones in real time.

Remember Attendees Can Be In A Different Time Zone

Post your remote job ad on We Work Remotely, the largest remote work community in the world. You’ll find candidates who thrive on autonomous work and don’t require hand-holding to help your team get to the next level. Tools like World Time Buddy and Time and Date make planning meetings easier.

• When you schedule a meeting with a client in a different time zone, check and double-check that you’ve done your math correctly.
• In order for the company to be effective and at the same time productive, adaptation will be the key to unlocking that potential.
• We’ve noted time zone converters like World Time Buddy in our list of the best apps for travelers and remote workers because it is so crucial.
• Your account ID is a number by default, but you are welcome to edit to your preference (i.e. company name).

This means their time is equally distributed between their own office’s time zone and another team’s time zone. When working to establish functional global teams, organizations need to primarily focus on optimizing their communication. Teams working in multiple time zones can’t rely on synchronized communication, facial expressions, or non-verbal cues to decipher the message. As mentioned earlier, this can cause misunderstandings that can seriously affect operational https://remotemode.net/ processes and cause unnecessary delays. 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.

Why Operationalizing Distributed Work Means Going Beyond Just Technology

To accommodate several different employees in various time zones, you may need to adjust your own schedule to work earlier on some days and later on other days. If you have recurring team or department meetings, change up the time every so often to avoid inconveniencing the same employees for too long. Team TimeZone is one of the best apps for streamlining the work hours of employees effectively. Using this app, the manager can visualize every developer in the team, what they are working on, minimizing interruptions, and it also provides for automatic integration with slack as well as other tools. Team TimeZone provides detailed as well as compact views for various-sized teams.

In any company, effective communication among team members is key to optimizing business performance and reaching organizational goals. Especially if you’re new to management or have a new team member, a “norming session” is a great way to make sure your team is functioning on the same wavelength. This can be particularly important when it comes to long-distance communication. In a global context, it’s probably worth your while to spend a little extra time on goal-setting, check-ins, and expectations. You want to be sure you and your direct report are on the same page about who is doing what, when, and why. Consider asking them to draft monthly, quarterly, and annual goals, along with any other useful performance metrics and milestones. Maintain consistent check-ins to see how these goals are progressing and to answer any questions.

As the world is moving toward a fully distributed work model, there’s still plenty of value in in-person team meetups. After all, there’s only so much that can be conveyed virtually. While the digital workspace can perfectly support all the work processes, the social component takes the biggest hit in organizations promoting a remote-first work culture.