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Also, verify that everyone engaged has the necessary administrative access to avoid late-night calls, hold-ups, and rescheduling. Companies who need time zone management must reconsider traditional communication channels, such as email, and embrace more flexible solutions and approaches to create more space for productive conversation. 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. As more businesses go remote, a new wave of businesses is focusing on honing the art of working as a globally distributed workforce.
I lived through my birthday and the U.S. presidential election in the German capital. Slack emojis, also known as reacjis, are a fun way to spice up your normal business communication. You can utilize them for everything from celebrations to polls to getting actual work done.
Microsoft Teams and the Office Suite
Google calendar has a setting that you can choose your home time zone and then appointments will always be scheduled in that time zone unless you choose otherwise. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that sending someone a quick email will save them time, when it may actually end up wasting more of their day. If you need something done urgently or want your co-worker to make a decision ASAP, pick up the phone and talk it out. Asynchronous communication (“async”) is when information is sent at separate times with a delay in between.
- There are many features of the world that I simply cannot wrap my head around, and one of these has always been time zones.
- 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.
- And seriously, with so many choices in how to communicate, there’s really no excuse.
- To maintain my moniker of a part-time world traveler, I spent winter 2016 in Europe, living in Berlin for all of November.
- Furthermore, you should trust your team members to do their work, and avoid micromanaging or overcommunicating.
In this case, you have more runway in choosing from a wider range of timezone options. Anytime you’re scheduling a meeting, state the time of the meeting with the time zone. That gives the client the opportunity to make adjustments before everyone’s calendar fills up. I was going to put together a fabulous list of all the great tools that are out there for working across time zones, and then they did it for me. It was a total facepalm moment, but I also learned a new tool to add to my arsenal for seamlessly working across time zones and maintaining a work-life balance while traveling the world. 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.
Benefits of working across time zones
That way, they’ll be able to keep the project moving along once they’re back online, or have enough information to know a face-to-face meeting is needed. When working across multiple time zones, it’s easy for team members to feel like they are in their own world sometimes. Make sure you are utilizing the best tools available, and work with your teams to determine the most efficient methods to continue moving forward as a cohesive team. Technology has continued to shape and develop the way we do just about everything in our daily lives. Using technology, teams are working across multiple time zones smoothly and it’s opening all kinds of doors for businesses.
- One of the first mistakes you may make when working remotely from home is to allow all of your favorite (or least favorite) items in the house to distract you.
- To avoid the frequent issue of working remotely in a different time zone, businesses might establish an official time zone for all team members to use when scheduling meetings or establishing deadlines.
- Crowded city centers emptied out as people opted for communities where people had a little more space.
- By allowing employees to have more control over their working hours, employers foster an environment for enhanced productivity and job satisfaction.
- 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.
- There are a number of software tools and solutions that make managing a remote team easier.
- You should also have a reliable and secure internet connection, and use VPNs or encryption if needed.
In this guest post, Jessica Day of Dialpad offers effective strategies for working with teams in different time zones. From setting boundaries to keeping the information accessible, these recommendations will help you build a successful, collaborative international team. The world is a changin’ and working across time zones is becoming more and more common for different industries.
Best practices for working across time zones
This means that if one team member works while another is sleeping, it does not mean they can’t communicate or collaborate with each other effectively (unless this pattern repeats itself for several weeks). We’re constantly sharing what’s going on with our lives and schedules, whether we’re popping out to grab some tacos at lunch or spending the next 4 months in Costa Rica. The tool shown above is one that our awesome developer Dan made just for Buffer, and it helps us all a ton to know what’s going on with any teammate at a glance. (If you’re a developer yourself and want something similar, he’s made the code available on Github).
When you schedule a meeting with a client in a different time zone, check and double-check that you’ve done your math correctly. You can use an online tool like TimeAndDate.com to determine the time zone your colleague is in. You can also try asking https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ 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.