“When you only work in a single time zone, that limits your potential employees to people who also live in that region (or are willing to work during those hours, if they live elsewhere),” Erhard said. It’s not only employees who can potentially benefit from working across time zones—this arrangement also allows distributed groups to be more responsive and available when customers need help. Working across time zones can yield benefits for both employees and employers, from improving work-life balance to widening the talent pool for new hires. “Be ready to jump on a call/video-call without having to schedule a time for it,” Ronnqvist Ahmadi advises. “Let your team know you’re available over Slack (or whichever tool you use), and build in ‘air-time’ in your agenda for check-ins or quick chats.”
The actual time difference poses one of the biggest barriers to effective communication across distributed teams. Although it can get challenging at times to manage a geographically dispersed team, there are still many more benefits to the approach. And this is particularly why we’re seeing a consistent increase in the number of companies employing globally.
Pros of working across time zones
Have them working on separate things with just a small amount of overlap when the times are convenient. There are a lot of different scenarios that we could play out here, but the thing to keep in mind is try organizing your team so that it’s less painful. When we work with people from across the globe, we often have to work at unusual times. We have to work odd hours if we want to interact with our colleagues on the other side of the world.
These benefits allow your team to work better together and can lead your international teammates to feel more included in your team’s day-to-day work. As someone who’s managed marketing initiatives at companies with remote employees and offices around the world, I’ve seen what successful and unsuccessful international collaboration looks https://remotemode.net/ like first hand. That might not be enough to schedule meetings across a number of time zones, but it’s a quick way to figure out if you’re ok to call your boss at 6 p.m. That, perhaps, is the greatest reason that it’s tough to add remote work—and especially a time shift—to teams with years of experience working together in an office.
Coordinating Meetings
“The hardest thing to do is to make sure you don’t end up working 12-hour days routinely,” Kelly notes. 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. If you’re based in your office headquarters, Kelly says you should “remember that your counterparts in most international offices are accustomed to working odd shifts all the time.” Then, if you want another easy way to know what time it is everywhere your team’s located, you can turn on the World clock in the Calendar Labs settings. Write what you’ve done that day, share where you’re hung up on a project, and ping others with ideas. Developers, perhaps, have it the easiest with code comments and pull requests, but everyone should share what’s happening in their own “manager of one” domain.
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For example, if some of your meetings have meant that your team members in France have had to attend at 1 am local time, try to arrange your next meeting so that they can attend during their usual work hours. Alongside the benefits of https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/, there are some challenges to consider as well. When considering candidates from different regions than where the company is based, SMB leaders must review how their taxes, payroll, compliance, recruiting, and benefits may be affected. Hosting an open virtual meeting meant to replicate an office breakroom can also be fruitful. Everyone should be invited to voluntarily join the meeting room at a time that works for them. This sort of impromptu, off-the-cuff discussion can resemble “watercooler chat” and enables colleagues to brainstorm various topics and connect on a more personal level.
When to start a voice call instead of jumping on a video meeting
With more & more companies adopting a remote work model, the tips & tools will help you achieve success while working remotely with teams in different time zones. Read to know more to find out the best practices and working remotely tips and tools. After all, having employees working in different time zones is the equivalent of offering your organization a 24-hour workplace — with the top talent on the planet. Without the need for overtime or late-night shifts, teams can collaborate to fulfill deadlines. Employees in the one-time zone can hand over half-finished projects to peers in another time zone to finish. Remote workers and companies experience lots of benefits—cost savings, less distractions, and increased productivity, to name a few.
Let’s break down all the benefits of working across time zones to get a better understanding of the trend. The post outlines how to build an effective time zone agnostic team as a company leader, people manager, colleague, and as a geographically remote person. While it may seem overkill to hire a person solely dedicated to this, it’s a mistake to think that you can simply take what was working in the office.
