How To Address Different Time Zone Challenges in Remote Work Setting?
Make a list of the nations with whom you collaborate, as well as all of the holidays during which your team members will be unavailable. Working across different time zones with your team needs a special level of inclusion, empathy, and respect. Following the above tips working remotely in a different time zone and practices will help you develop a schedule and a working model that will keep everybody happy and included while valuing the personal needs of each team member. Nobody said that working in different time zones is effortless, painless, and does not need sacrifices.
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Six in 10 respondents said they believe business travel is a key component of professional development, and half agree their leaders believe the same. “Employees are noticing that employers are not just looking at the dollar amount of the trip, but instead seeing the value in investing in them,” says Huska. She says these off-sites have a “huge impact” on both business morale and team motivation. “Then in September, we do a shorter trip in the UK, which is a work-free event, and purely about coming together as a team for a bit of fun with activities like beer tasting or clay-pigeon shooting.”
This is why it is critical to maintain thorough written records of all procedures and initiatives. Also, verify that everyone engaged has the necessary administrative access to avoid late-night calls, hold-ups, and rescheduling. Nonetheless, although it may be relatively easy for a software business to adapt its processes to function across time zones, this strategy is just not sustainable for other sectors and teams. Let’s take a closer look at the sorts of teams that are leading the way in cross-time zone collaboration with proper time zone management. Whether you’re working on a large freelance project, collaborating with colleagues, or managing a team remotely, implementing these 6 tips will optimize your productivity and help you master time zone management.
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Asynchronous communication has been established as the ideal technique for enterprises that operate across time zones. The asynchronous technique, in addition to removing the time limitation of the previous synchronous approach, ideally assures communication records stay available. The times when you’re all together with your team become a lot more sacred when you work remote.
- In this case, you have more runway in choosing from a wider range of timezone options.
- Furthermore, it will help if you make meeting rules that say what format should be used.
- A popular communication tool like Slack will help you with its features like emojis and others.
- When scheduling meetings, tools like SimplyBook.me or Calendly can help you find a time that works for everyone.
It’s the one app that comes up in nearly every discussion of how to make remote teams work. Even reporters from The New York Times have found that Slack helps them stay connected to their newsroom while away on assignments. “Any remote worker knows you have to be flexible, so I feel time zone differences don’t impact your remote work life too much,” says Zapier’s Smith. “I’d quite happily sacrifice staying a little later or getting up a little earlier to avoid the stresses of a morning commute in rush hour traffic.”
Set Clear Expectations
Slack, for instance, lists each team member’s time zone, how many hours that is from your local time, and that person’s current local time whenever you click their name. That’s an easy way to double-check before expecting an immediate reply. Or, if you attempt to message everyone in a group, Slack can let you know it’s late for some people before you hit send. It’s impossible to overstate how crucial Slack—a team chat app that makes it easy to search through all of your team’s messages—is to remote teams.
This post provides a template and tips for highlighting specific skills, emphasizing important requirements, and more. 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. Getting used to higher autonomy and async communication can be challenging, but there are more and more companies doing it–and doing it well. Check out our post on 100+ fully remote companies for more examples. If you are providing information, invest the additional time upfront to answer any questions or solve any issues you think the person may have ahead of time.
The time to adjust to different time zones depends on the communication tools and workflow of any specific organization. If you have efficient streamlining tools and time management software then adjusting to different time zone is easy and doesn’t take long. But even still, if you want to make a distributed team work, you need to accept a time shift. “I’ll take phone calls late in the evening from folks that don’t realize I’m on the east coast and consider that part of the job for someone working remotely in a different time zone,” Furbish says. The most important thing to do when working remotely is to grow comfortable communicating asynchronously whenever possible.
Make a list of the nations with whom you collaborate, as well as all of the holidays during which your team members will be unavailable. Working across different time zones with your team needs a special level of inclusion, empathy, and respect. Following the above tips working remotely in a different time zone and practices…