Once everyone’s set and communicated their working hours, make sure you’re respecting them! This respect is so key to maintaining work-life balance across time zones, and making sure that everyone is communicating in a productive way. 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. Building an asynchronous culture can seem intimidating but you’ll need to if you plan to work across time zones.
Being conscious of inclusion could go a long way to maintaining your team members happy and invested at work. Whether you are meeting after hours or during work time, it’s crucial to be careful about scheduling such events. Moreover, you can utilize task management software like Asana and Trello to monitor progress and hold one another responsible for tasks that should be done. Also, you can set definite deadlines for every task so everybody knows the timeframe within which they must finish their part. Such tools let you work on the same documents, share tasks, communicate more efficiently, and help resolve concerns easily.
Apps and Tools to Help Remote Teams Working Across Time Zones
GitLab might be the world’s largest fully distributed company with 1,400+ remote workers in 65+ countries. More than 30 million users and 100,000 organizations from startups to global enterprise organizations use GitLab to deliver great software at new speeds. The Head of Remote position sits on the organization’s leadership team and is responsible for building and maintaining remote company culture and employee experience. It was first suggested by Andreas Klinger, CTO at On Deck, and pioneered by GitLab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij and Darren Murph. When it comes to working remotely with teams across different time zones, the most important thing is to be mindful, empathetic, and respectful.
- This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.
- Scheduled synchronous communication like planned video calls/syncups allow me to better mentally prepare.
- Keep in mind that conflict and misinterpretation can be prevented in the future with a careful understanding of cultural norms.
- Teams exchange messages with one other without expecting a response right away.
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. We’re familiar with the premise that it takes around 25 minutes to resume your workflow flow after an interruption. Therefore, any amount of time difference can be used as an advantage for distributed teams, considering it gives employees time to work undistracted. Let’s get a closer look at what working across time zones entails and how you can adopt better strategies to accommodate the demands of a globally distributed team.
AWS Developer Job Description (Template + Tips)
You can use an online tool like TimeAndDate.com to determine the time zone your colleague is in. You can also try asking them what times they are available during, and when their day starts/ends so you know how much overlap there will be with yours. They were created in the nineteenth century because the world needed a unified system to keep track of time. There’s no need to wait for a conference call or meeting to start talking when you work together from the same office. To avoid team blockers related to timezones, one thing Susanne Ronnqvist Ahmadi, HubSpot’s Vice President of International Marketing, says you should aim to have a flexible schedule at certain points of the day.
Not to mention that if all time zones are covered, then the company can serve its customers 24/7 without the need for late-night shifts. This is why study after study after study has shown remote workers to be more productive than their in-office colleagues. Diverse teams made up of remote working remotely in a different time zone team members from around the world, especially in management positions, escape local echo chambers and build truly world-class products. Working across time zones is tricky, but the benefits outweigh the costs if you have the right culture, processes, and follow best practices.
Tips for Working With Teams in Different Timezones
This is foundational to working in a distributed team spread across time zones where quick check-ins aren’t 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. While operating with time zone differences has its benefits, it’s also challenging. Particularly if you don’t introduce new processes to manage a truly global team. When everyone lives in different time zones, writing, planning, and documentation tend to become the default behavior for remote employees.
- While it may seem strange to let people work at all times of the day, you’re already going to be doing that indirectly by working across time zones.
- Additionally, team members can create a shared document with their work schedules highlighting no-contact hours to ensure clear boundaries are being set and respected.
- These chat apps offer real-time messaging, file sharing, channel-based communication, and integrations with other productivity tools, allowing teams to collaborate, discuss projects, and share updates seamlessly.
- In this article we’ll compare and contrast commercial time tracking software with its open source counterpart.
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