Remote Work Across Time Zones: Expert Tips for Success

Working remotely across time zones presents unique difficulties due to the overlap of workdays. Finding a convenient time for team members in different regions of the world to work together and hold meetings can be challenging. In conclusion, working remotely across time zones has numerous benefits, including adaptability, productivity, workplace diversity, and financial savings. In today’s globally interconnected world, businesses and workers alike can benefit from embracing remote work. Google Calendar looks basic at first glance, but it’s packed with features that make it great for remote teams—or really any team.

As a result of creating a wiki, you’ll be able to create transparency and stimulate a continuous flow of ideas and feedback. Async communication, on the other hand, refers to sending information at different times and delaying the delivery. Examples would be sending an email or leaving a voice message for them to respond working remotely in a different time zone to whenever it’s convenient for them. Exposure to emergency alert tests may prepare people to act quickly in the event of a real emergency, he said. Wednesday’s test will evaluate the technological capabilities of the national alert system to reach and inform as many people as possible in case of a widespread emergency.

ROTATE MEETING TIMES

Ideally, these virtual spaces would inspire teams to add to the informal chat thread, regardless of the time they logged in. For one, organizations should consider setting and respecting their team’s time zone boundaries. For example, teams can create shared calendars showing their availability across different hours in a day to ensure no time zone boundaries are crossed.

Expressing your appreciation, recognition, and reaction to each other’s work and partnership helps mitigate the lack of social cues. It can be as simple as a ❤ emoji to a message to as formal as a shoutout to your counterpart’s line managers. Being welcomed and recognized makes employees feel more included, especially when they’re not physically together and sometimes alone in a country. Besides, fixed schedules might make a group of people within a certain timezone constantly need to stay late. Communicating plainly across timezones means you need to package information and share it in one exchange if possible. This way, colleagues can act immediately and don’t need to wait another day just to get the full context.

Tools

Let’s get a closer look at what working across time zones entails and how you can adopt better strategies to accommodate the demands of a globally distributed team. It’s tough to keep the collaboration and team spirit high with one team leaving the virtual office just as another is starting their workday. When teams are working across timezones, real-time communication via IM (instant messaging) and meetings can be challenging. Sometimes they might be overused for matters that teams can discuss and align asynchronously. Weighing in on urgency and priority shows respect for everyone’s time and schedule and helps you and your colleagues choose a better communication method. Now that you know each other’s time zones, it’s time to evaluate when someone can respond to messages, invites, and comments and to what extent.