For teams working across time zones, it can be tempting to respond to notifications that come in after your normal working day has finished. That’s particularly true when your input is essential to the progress of a project. Applications like Trello are commonly used to manage team projects, but there are other products on the market that might be better suited to your team.
- Of course, for companies that work across time zones, this sort of endeavor would include devising clever ways to get everyone on board and participate in the dialogue.
- While remote work has its benefits, time zone differences can make the employee management difficult without the right tools and processes in place.
- Create a video chat guidelines document to ensure that you won’t waste precious time waiting for everyone to connect or wondering whether you have your microphone muted.
- You will need to remember to be flexible, respect boundaries, be available, and use virtual tools to assist in communication.
- When compared against the benefits, the downsides of working across several time zones are minor inconveniences.
“The hardest thing to do is to make sure you don’t end up working 12-hour days routinely,” Kelly notes. Alternatively, Kelly says you could also consider picking a few days per week where you’ll work on another international https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ team’s schedule entirely. Similarly, if a hiring manager in California gives a Dublin-based job candidate an interview time without noting EST or PST, the job candidate might log on for a video interview at the wrong time.
How to Calculate Employee Hours Worked (+Examples)
Maintaining culture is a vital component of every company’s business success, but it is especially critical for totally remote teams. Understanding the distinctions between creating and maintaining a dynamic culture in a remote work setting vs an office-based environment is of utmost importance and companies can not ignore it. 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.
- Using Outlook or Google calendar to schedule meetings will typically automatically adjust the meeting time for each participant.
- Or maybe you’re fully distributed, with teammates on every continent around the world.
- It’s possible to hire people around the globe and still have your whole team working 9-to-5 at your office’s time zone—after all, plenty of people work night shifts—but it’s not optimal.
- When working with teams in different time zones, it’s also worth considering how you can automate processes to maximize employees’ productivity.
With market competitiveness at an all-time high, back-end teams are being challenged to provide solid solutions that improve efficiency… This question originally appeared on Quora – the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. Your availability can be emailed to meeting attendees once you’ve made your preferences.
The Key to timezone Etiquette
A global meeting’s ideal time will invariably change depending on the exact time zones involved. EST (10 a.m. and noon PST) is an excellent sweet spot if you’re just working with multiple time zones in the US. The pin function is another vital feature of such team chat applications since it helps keep critical papers top of mind and quickly accessible. 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. One-off videos and screen captures shouldn’t be the only place that teammates can turn for information and context in real time. Building an internal wiki that documents best practices and processes is critical, and there are a world of tools out there to help including Notion, Confluence, and even Google Drive.
You’ll also want each team member working from a private space with minimal distractions (a quiet office or home office). If colleagues are close by, try asking them to work together at one desk so they can easily collaborate on projects as necessary. Making adjustments on your end will make you look professional and gracious, leaving your partners with a positive impression of you. The cornerstone of remote work is technology and it can do a lot more than just enable employees to log in and jump on video calls. To ensure there’s always someone available to answer questions or respond to urgent topics, you’ll want to create an overlap. This is a time when everyone on your team can be online and available to answer questions or discuss topics.
Schedule any meetings during the times everyone can attend
People who use DST turn their clocks ahead by an hour during summertime to save electricity. Make a habit of using military time and specifying time zones when scheduling meetings. You could even include a reminder telling recipients to convert the indicated time to their local time zones. Mention your schedule and preferred communication channels while introducing yourself so that your coworkers know how to reach you.
This may work better for colleagues who want a more regular schedule to fit in with family commitments. Use this article as your guide to overcome these challenges and you’ll be well on your way to building strong relationships across time zones. 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 https://remotemode.net/ 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. Synchronous communication (“sync”) is when discussions are conducted in real-time, allowing for immediate responses and feedback between colleagues.