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By embracing different time zones, you can build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. Research from McKinsey found that ethnically and racially diverse companies outperform their less diverse peers by 36% when it comes to financial metrics. Traditionally companies have relegated themselves to hiring people who live within commuting distance of their offices or at most, the same time zone.
Working across time zones can be a major challenge for distributed teams. Questions over how to ensure equal input, how to streamline meetings, and how to collaborate effectively are all valid concerns. With the ever-increasing demand for a workforce that can work across time zones, a lot of pressure has also emanated from the failure to maintain a work-life balance. This is because the majority of the time, there isn’t any separation of the two. Some employees have to work during midnight hours in order to accommodate others and hence one’s sleeping pattern changes and if not managed, demotivation, brain drain can arise.
Pro: It’s easier to value output over time-in-seat
Consider which time-consuming background tasks could be suitable for AI to make the most of your international team’s time. An automated program will work 24 hours, allowing workers in all time zones to benefit from its data processing power while focusing on tasks that require a human touch. As the rise of remote jobs continues, businesses of all sizes are feeling the draw of a global virtual workplace. Employing an international team gives you all the productivity of a 24-hour workday, with colleagues able to pass projects in progress to international counterparts as they clock off. The difficulties of managing different time zones, language barriers, and cultural differences can be frustrating.
- But working across time zones can also present various technological challenges.
- If you want to work remotely in sync with the North American economy, and you want to avoid time zone obstacles, we recommend Latin America.
- Maintaining culture is a vital component of every company’s business success, but it is especially critical for totally remote teams.
- And the vast majority of the studies came to the same conclusion – flexibility and freedom offered within the approach largely impact productivity in the virtual workplace.
- Meetings, and other forms of synchronous communication, have their place.
- Sync and async communication are important to understand when working with a distributed team.
If part of your meeting is taking place between people in the same room, those who cannot physically attend can find it more difficult to chime in. With everyone attending the meeting separately on video calls, regardless of their location, everyone is on a level playing field. It makes it easier to track who is speaking and avoids prioritising communication between select groups. Not only do you have more distributed access between teams, but you also benefit from the diversity of different voices. There are ways to combat the difficulties of working across time zones that can be adopted as part of constructing a good working culture as a developer. One-off videos and screen captures shouldn’t be the only place that teammates can turn for information and context in real time.
USE TOOLS FOR ASYNCHRONOUS COLLABORATION
When you’re not in the same place with your teammates and you don’t have set work hours, one thing that becomes really important is frequent, clear communication. We use a variety of tools at Buffer, many of which we’ve blogged about before. For synchronous, everyone-at-the-same-time communication, we use Slack for written chats and Zoom for video chats. Possibly the simplest tip of all is also the one that can be the hardest to keep top of mind. Typically, we try to be mindful of what time it is for others when we use synchronous communication like video or Slack. This keeps us from asking a teammate to dive into a brand-new project if they’re just about to jump off for their evening, for example.
- Including your office hours in your email signature, work chat profile, LinkedIn account, and Google profile will prevent misunderstandings.
- If your daily tasks involve managing a remote team, consider creating a team-wide schedule to follow.
- If this time zone sounds appealing to you, we suggest you take a look at the cheapest places to stay in Thailand.
Having distributed teams working across time zones essentially implies round-the-clock workflow. Companies employing diverse teams spanning multiple time zones enjoy complete time zone coverage. Having all shifts and time zones covered is especially convenient for support and customer service as people don’t need to work past the conventional work hours in their countries, in the case of an emergency. However, other departments and industries can benefit from the approach as well. When working within different time zones, it is very important to be mindful of your teammates’ time zone.
For Developers
This is foundational to working in a distributed team spread across time zones where quick check-ins aren’t feasible. Even the most introverted remote workers need https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ social interaction, humans just aren’t designed for solitude. This is probably the most obvious challenge of working across multiple time zones, and rightfully so.
Pay particular attention to whether any options are unavailable in certain countries — you want all of your employees to be using a cohesive suite of products, regardless of where they’re based. Give particular consideration to your progress tracker software, which will enable you to build strategies in real time and monitor the progress of colleagues across the globe. This will allow global workers to keep on the same page with each project, leaving one another notes for seamless handover.