The already limited communication opportunities leave no room for staff to share what they’re working on, talk about ideas, or future plans. This can leave employees feeling their work is being overlooked, and potentially affect their career advancement as it doesn’t allow enough insight into their effort and contribution. If a meeting is necessary, make attendance optional so you’re not asking teammates to stay up late to get up early. If it’s recurring and unavoidable (and it often will be), try to schedule meeting times so that the burden is shared across the team rather than by the same people each week. While it can be challenging to manage a distributed team, fully remote companies have many benefits. This is why we’re seeing a consistent increase in the number of distributed teams hiring globally.
- “When there were 4 people, everyone knew everything. When there are 75 people, that no longer scales,” he says.
- Handing the headache over to a professional employer organization (PEO), like ExtensisHR, can help.
- The best job for you might not be in your hometown, and you might work better when you aren’t shackled to a 9-to-5 workday.
- In fact, one prediction by Gartner shows that 75% of companies employing diverse decision-making teams can expect to outperform their business objectives in 2022.
- And that’s nice—we all need human interaction, and it’s great that you can still get that without being in the same room.
- Different perspectives and broad ideas can move the company’s vision forward and scale up the business by a considerable margin.
Each email program has its own unique features, but one that you will find across most of the common options is an alert when you are scheduling with a colleague in a different time zone. This is mostly a feature that works with internal accounts, so if you are emailing customers or other external partners, you might not have the option. Take it a step further and have everyone share a local food or drink that you might not find in other places. It’s always fun to learn something new and it’s a great way to bring people a little closer together even when they are physically far apart. Even while many companies are reopening their office spaces, it may look a little different with hybrid events and more people still working from home. With the coronavirus pandemic shutting down many office spaces and sending people into a brand new remote work position practically overnight, it’s safe to say that the idea of the workplace has made a giant shift.
An Engineer’s Guide to Working Across Time Zones
Team members will adapt quickly to any of the communication tools you choose, but even if they are chatting via Slack all day, it’s important to have some time set aside once a week or twice a month to check in. People communicate differently when in a group setting like a video conference and it can improve the overall team dynamics. Technology has continued to shape and develop the way we do just about everything in our daily lives.
Simultaneously, it’s beneficial to establish several points of contact across time zones. Google Calendar looks basic at first glance, but it’s packed with features that make it great for remote teams—or really any team. You can set your own time zone, and working remotely in a different time zone save the time zones you work with most to have an easy way to switch between them. Slack, for instance, lists each team member’s time zone, how many hours that is from your local time, and that person’s current local time whenever you click their name.
The Key to timezone Etiquette
Team members working in different time zones are also able to communicate with each other, getting to know each other’s times and their productive hours as well. Overall such information has to be as clear as it can be and if there is a language barrier, grouping team members according to their languages can be a good tactical move. Every meeting held has to be recorded for future referencing and for other team members who were not able to attend to ensure that everyone is on the same page. It is therefore important to note that communication is the backbone of every organization, even more important to companies that have employees that work across time zones.
Teams, for example, can build shared calendars that reflect their availability throughout the day to ensure no time zone borders are crossed. To prevent this common hurdle of working across time zones, organizations can set an official time zone for all team members to reference when scheduling meetings or setting deadlines. With a uniform time zone in place, employees can easily figure out the time difference for their location and plan accordingly.
Tips for Working with Teammates in Different timezones
If each manager is setting meetings according to their own personal time zone, that leaves everyone else scrambling to translate it to their own. Adopting an official time zone means everyone will set and communicate meetings or deadlines with the same time zone, regardless of where they’re located. This can make it easier for employees to quickly know what the time difference is for their location.
