Time Zone Overlap Vs Opposite Time Zones For Remote Teams

Regularly recognize and reward employees internally for good work or special achievements, individually and in front of their colleagues. Showcase employee volunteer activities or personal achievements on company social media channels. Hire people who feel passionate about their work, and give them the right tools and resources to succeed. From the on-a-different-time-zone-employee’s perspective, they may also worry that they’re going to be overlooked for opportunities, cut out of the information loop or feel lonely.

I was a ball of nerves every time we worked from somewhere where I felt unsure about the WiFi quality for video streaming. This is a good backup WiFi option, and I wish I had it from the start of my remote work journey. When I arrived at the building, I’d walk right past the coffee and Happy Hour beer and check out the outlet situation . It grinds my gears when I’m in the work groove, my battery flashes red at 5%, and I look up and see all the seats near outlets are gone. With the time on my calendar, strategy demanded that I don’t ignore and deprioritize it for more “quick-wins.” It validates the legitimacy of doing work that doesn’t always have an output. I prioritized those projects over any strategic research and development. Before leaving for my travels, I outlined a lot of deadlines to keep myself accountable.

Pro: It’s Easier To Value Output Over Time

Since you will not always be able to manage your employees in real-time, it is ideal that you clarify your expectations from your workforce at the very beginning. Scheduling and assigning a task list at the start of a week gives your employees a scope to analyze the target work beforehand. If they encounter any queries, a mutually suitable time can be assigned for a meeting to discuss them. Thus, setting weekly objectives can help keep the workflow going, irrespective of different time zones. However, failing to manage your team working remotely from different corners can negatively impact the growth of your business by disengaging the workforce and reducing employee productivity. Satellite offices and remote work systems can create a huge communication gap in your system, making it difficult to create a strong professional relationship.

The clockwise is one of the best tools for managing the calendars and meetings for remote developers in your organization. The clockwise is essentially a smart calendar that helps in optimizing your workflow so that the right resources are allocated to the important tasks and projects. If each of your international teams keeps a 9-to-5 schedule in their own time zone, it could be impossible to communicate directly with some of them. Instead, experiment with different shifts to keep the conversation flowing between teams. Options could include one or more days per week on which employees work a half-day in the office, then remotely at night or early in the morning.

Odds are, a great teammate will get back to you when they begin working the next day. As a hardworking employee located farther away from your company’s office, you might find feel pressure to say yes to every meeting you’re invited to. Additionally, you might also find it hard to say no to meetings — or suggest other times — for meetings scheduled outside of your regular working hours.

Great Employees Don’t Complain

Building relationships is vital for any thriving business, even for teams in multiple time zones. If there are certain processes where you need the participation of the employees then it should be drafted in your company policies and communicated with the candidates before you hire them. However, apart from that, you must have a flexible working hours policy which gives the employees the freedom of working at their convenience for getting the best results.

• That’s why the most crucial part of building a remote team is hiring self-directed workers—”managers of one,” as the Basecamp team calls them in their book Rework.
• This becomes important when scheduling meetings, waiting for responses and generally being aware of colleagues’ working hours.
• For example, Lucidchart helps teams visualize their data and map their processes in one shareable space.
• If you’re always waiting for someone to tell you what to do next, and that someone’s asleep while you’re working, you’ll never get anything done.
• You can invite your team members to join a private group or a public channel in the team chat app you use — for example, you can name the channel #group-activities, #team_fun_times, or simply, #team-building.

Moreover, the country’s government is focusing excessively on tech innovation, making Brazilian employees primed for digital transformation roles. In fact, Stanford reports that there’s a tech boom in São Paulo at the moment due to the country’s inclination towards mobile and web development. Companies in these states should hire Colombian citizens for remote work if they want to benefit from the easier collaboration and swift communication that come as perks of overlapping time zones. Instead, synchronous communication is the way to go, especially for work that requires consistent and uninterrupted collaboration. Synchronous communication means that collaboration takes place in real-time, similar to how people interact in person. This is only possible on a regular basis when everyone is working in overlapping time zones. When you hire workers based on time zone overlap, it’s also important to consider the work culture in the respective country.

Limited Opportunities For Employee Effort Recognition

By hiring remote workers, you’ll never have to worry about geographical limitations again. If so, then you know the challenges in staying on the same page that come with working remotely.

More than 30 million users and 100,000 organizations from startups to global enterprise organizations use GitLab to deliver great software at new speeds. A great way to introduce a more async, documentation culture is to build an employee handbook. An employee handbook is a written document that outlines the company’s mission, culture, core values, policies, procedures, teams, best practices, and any other information employees need to do their work.

Prep Before Meetings

When employees have a break to check their messages, they can give each response the time and attention it deserves. Project managers like Trello, Basecamp, and Asana keep track of what everyone’s working on as it moves through the pipeline. https://remotemode.net/ And using one is a must-have for any team hoping to improve remote collaboration. Whatever they choose, it’s important to respect everyone’s preferred work hours and do-not-disturb hours — and know when these occur in their time zone.

You pick the cities where everyone lives, and the date for your meeting, and it’ll show in green, yellow, and red the times that are best, not too bad, and terrible for everyone. Write what you’ve done that day, share where you’re hung up on a project, and ping others with ideas. Developers, perhaps, have it the easiest with code comments and pull requests, but everyone should share what’s happening in their own “manager of one” domain. “One danger of my job, as a columnist who works in California, is a feeling of disconnection from the mother ship in New York,” writes technology columnist Farhad Manjoo. Even still, odds are you’ll be working with someone who’s not online at the same time as you.

Advantage #1: You Widen Your Talent Pool

Then the next time you organize a meeting, share the burden and make it easy for them and harder for everyone else. This leads to a better run company, less stress, and higher quality work.

That kind of thinking also led O’Brian to consider her written communication more carefully. “I think a lot more now about speaking slowly, considering what I’m saying, and demystifying jargon,” she says. Several of us are using this little app called The Clock to show a second set of clocks on our menu bars. It’s unobtrusive, and constantly helpful — you’ll thank yourself too many times for installing it. Occasional late-night, or early-morning meetings can be necessary — here, everyone involved should be aware of their teammate’s needs, and look to reach a compromise.

• This documentation improves the customer experience by ensuring a seamless handoff and increases trust and collaboration among your remote workers.
• Abi Tyas Tunggal Nov 29, 2021Abi is one of the co-founders of Himalayas where he focuses on product and growth.
• We’ll show you what those are, and how to work efficiently with teammates across different time zones in a way that’s productive (and not intrusive!).
• While I was abroad, we moved all meetings to overlap with my time difference.
• Just plug in your team’s current locations, and these calculators will find cross-over hours to meet .

However, at the end of the day, it’s important for each individual to take ownership of their own working hours to avoid the potential burnout that comes with being online 24 hours a day. Communication and collaboration are fundamental elements of team work since they enable the team to function as a cohesive unit to get work done.

Team Management

But, despite all the benefits of having a diverse global staff, companies are still trying to figure out how to work successfully across different timezones. In today’s workplace, diversity breeds new and unique ideas, allows us to look at our campaigns from different points of view, and benefits companies financially. In fact, by 2022, Gartner predicts that 75% of businesses with diverse frontline decision-makers will exceed their financial targets. Eastern Standard Time covers the states in the eastern part of North America and runs from Maine to Florida, while Central Standard Time includes Texas up to Montana. Mountain Standard Time spans Utah’s Rocky Mountains all the way over to Arizona, and Pacific Standard Time includes California and Nevada to Washington State.

Be a master of knowing which countries change clocks, and which don’t. Don’t miss our evergreen list of how to pack for a remote work trip, for anywhere in the world. Simply line up the cursor to find a time when everyone will be awake, or a time that aligns with other parameters set in place. Ultimately, most important things to embrace and keep in mind when working with team members in different timezones are respect, empathy, and inclusion. “That feeling of inclusion can make such a difference to employee retention, happiness, and performance — so the little things actually matter quite a lot,” McGinty said. “Alternatively, you can also block the time at the end of the day with a private reminder that says, “Go home now, you’ve been here since 6 am,” Kelly adds. Certain countries refrain from using a given scheme with its time standard unchanged.

Make it available any time for employees to access, obtain the latest information and update. Implement a virtual project management platform that works for your company’s needs. This can aid in the coordination of work, enhance efficiency and enable you to easily track individuals’ progress on tasks. Unless there’s an urgent issue, be mindful about contacting team members when they’re off work, even if it’s just by email. You don’t want to upset work-life balance by constantly making someone feel pressured to work at 11 p.m. Their time – even though it’s the middle of the workday for you and it feels normal.

Therefore, I didn’t want to miss them for anything, driven by the fear that my team might be wondering what I was up to if not delivering on my communicated plans. Time is precious, especially when the lines from work and home are blurred. If the meeting owner doesn’t set the meeting up to be as effective as possible, then maybe the meeting can be better executed over email.

Teams working in multiple time zones can’t rely on synchronized communication, facial expressions, or non-verbal cues to decipher the message. As mentioned earlier, this can cause working across time zones misunderstandings that can seriously affect operational processes and cause unnecessary delays. So, what is the difference between global teams that succeed, and those that don’t?

Let me know if there’s anything big or a small hack that you’re doing to make your remote work and life a little better in the comments below. Essentially you’re working solely on one initiative in your queue for twenty minutes straight , and then you give yourself a five-minute break. During those five minutes, I would stretch or get some water before the next 20 minutes set begins. I moved to a different country every month, which meant exposure to a variety of remote work hubs. Before starting at a new spot, I liked to walk there from my apartment and assess the route and lunch options. If a teammate requests feedback from me, I record myself and my screen to save time typing long, convoluted paragraphs. Plus, that enables my team members to see what I’m referring to directly and takes the guesswork out.