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We have a team that is distributed or has to work across 3 or 4 different timezones. In the course of this we have faced several challenges primarily relating to communication. When teams work in different time zones, someone can always be ready to tackle issues or make progress, meaning less downtime. As the idiom goes, “Make hay while the sun shines,” and in this case, the sun is always shining somewhere.
That way, you don’t have employees waiting for hours for direction on what to do next. There are definite https://remotemode.net/s that you will need to overcome, but you can overcome them. Below are some of the cons of working with teams in different time zones in addition to solutions to those problems. 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.
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Teach your remote team to be flexible about time, though, and everyone’s lives will be easier. David Fullerton had to overcome the communication hurdle when he was growing the Stack Exchange team. “When there were 4 people, everyone knew everything. When there are 75 people, that no longer scales,” he says. It makes working remotely in a different time zone scheduling meetings difficult, but we can also hand off work to keep the wheels turning 24/7. Jon Russell, a Bangkok-based reporter for TechCrunch, says remote work is what enables their site to run a 24-hour newsroom. “When it comes to online publishing, being in different places isn’t so strange,” says Russell.
- Ultimately, these things will help boost job retention, productivity, and your team’s overall performance.
- If it’s recurring and unavoidable (and it often will be), try to schedule meeting times so that the burden is shared across the team rather than by the same people each week.
- More significantly, it defines who a firm is and where it wants to go in the future.
- Remind remote team members that social interaction doesn’t have to come from co-workers or consider offering a co-working space stipend as a remote employee benefit.
This is easy for teams that work with people across two or three time zones that are all next to each other. However, it becomes more complicated when working with a global workforce (people who work on opposite sides of the world). For example, if someone works in Australia while another is located in the United States, it may be difficult to attend a meeting at the same time unless the Aussie gets up pretty early in the morning. After reflecting on what it’s like to work in a one-person timezone, I thought I’d share a bit more about what I’m working on and how I do it while most of my colleagues are offline. I hope some of the background and tips below might be useful to anyone experience anything similar or building a team with people across the globe. All of the steps above will enable you to create a schedule that works for your global team, include everyone in virtual meetings, and allow your diverse global teammates to contribute great ideas during their own work hours.
Working Across Multiple Time Zones: Tools and Strategies That Help Connect
When you’re working in different time zones, it can be hard to socialize at all, especially if nobody works in the same time zone as you. One easy way to fix this issue is to have online communication, such as Slack or another form of instant messaging. If you miss a team chat in real time, you can always view it later and make a comment to let the team know your thoughts and feel like a part of the group.