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You should avoid scheduling meetings during the times that you know everyone will not be awake, but this isn’t always possible if you work with people across multiple continents. If you do need to schedule something during off-hours, check first to make sure it is okay. Being part of a global team comes with a host of advantages—from learning from each other’s culture to numerous cross-learning opportunities. However, having colleagues in all time zones makes it difficult to keep track of the time and create boundaries. In this blog, I will talk about a few ways in which you can manage communications with colleagues in different parts of the world, making working across multiple time zones easier.
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. The large productivity improvement has been made possible by a general absence of interruptions, and a shorter commuting time and the overall comfort of the home or other selected work setting. And, as the epidemic fades and firms issue return-to-work notes, it’s back to business as usual for teams operating across time zones. Conducting meetings for a group of 10 or more busy individuals may be difficult; doing so for a globally scattered team in multiple time zones can be plain terrifying. Working across time zones is a difficulty that isn’t going away anytime soon, but you’re not alone.
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It is unreasonable to expect workers to be available from 8 am to 5 pm across all time zones. Companies are increasingly striving to measure remote work sustainability, but it’s not an easy feat. Learn best practices for evaluating the environmental impact of employees working from home. There’s a major difference between work habits in Europe, the U.S., Scandinavia, and Southeast Asia. Some regions take lunch at different times, take longer breaks, or don’t work traditional hours.
Oh, ye who think a one-hour time conversion is simpler than an eight-hour one. My brain likes to convert the wrong direction when I’m dealing with just an hour or two. But there was a really bright light with me being in Berlin and the client being stateside. I could edit all day and send the edits back to the client in my afternoon, just as they got back up and were starting to write again.
Best team practices when working across time zones
How does one make sure to reap all the benefits and suffer no drawbacks of working across time zones? We’re breaking down the seven tested and tried steps geographically dispersed teams can implement to strengthen formal and informal https://remotemode.net/ communication and build more trust and better collaboration across all teams. Diversity and inclusion drive innovation and positively impact overall business targets within remote companies that span across time zones.
Employees will be able to concentrate and provide their best efforts, collaborate on tasks with the team, and achieve common goals. So it’s reasonable to switch up meeting times every month or three months. This guarantees that no team is continually making a compromise to stay linked. Additionally, it can cause everyone to reconsider arranging meetings when they are the ones working irregular hours.
Schedule less urgent emails to send at a time where international teammates are active.
Perhaps you can have two different meetings on one day at two different times so everybody can get a chance to participate. Nobody said that working in different time zones is effortless, painless, and does not need sacrifices. The reality is that, often, somebody working remotely in a different time zone will have to stay up late for a meeting. That could be fostered through social meetings thanks to video chat and conference calls. Consider milestones successfully met, celebrations of team birthdays, and weekly virtual water-cooler conversations.
Valuing the sacrifices made by other workers creates an efficient and healthy work environment. Trivial mistakes make you look awful in front of your team member while working locally, but the same mistakes cause a 2-day delay when working overseas. 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.
Working with a distributed team can be challenging at first because it’s difficult to build the kind of rapport that comes naturally when working in an office setting. It takes extra effort for remote teams to stay on task without face-to-face communication. Working remotely in a different time zone presents distinct issues not seen in more standard work structures. Because the benefits exceed the negatives, it’s worth investigating the best team practices outlined above for successful working across time zones. They will assist you in developing the ideal combination of flexibility, asynchronous work, and an inclusive mentality to propel your remote team to continuous success. The pin function is another vital feature of such team chat applications since it helps keep critical papers top of mind and quickly accessible.
- If you encourage everyone to keep their work in a shared space, you can reduce the instances of someone sending a frantic email in the middle of someone else’s night just to get one document.
- This is why it’s paramount to keep detailed written records of all the processes and projects.
- 😉 Meetings are not that effective at reaching an agreement or getting actual work done.
- You’ll be amazed by how much can be replaced by a written memo or message.
- Also keep in mind that meetings are sometimes better than offline chat — just use good judgment and always think about alternatives.
- We often assume when we’re talking to someone new that they’re in the same time zone as us.