Best team practices when working across time zones

Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email with any questions. If you have to maintain certain hours of coverage despite your employees’ locations, split shifts can be an excellent solution. There are many other free apps you can download on your phone as well. With so many options, there’s sure to be something that helps you keep track of time across the planet.

But if you’re just starting out, you can probably do most of what you want with the personal version, and upscale later. With Google Drive, you can work from shared folders, assign levels of security, and enable notifications to let you know if another team member has worked with a document. Here at Anywhere and Anytime Careers, we use the comment section to provide feedback, ask questions, or add more information we want to add to a document in progress. It’s a good idea to resist the temptation to accept terms that conflict with your schedule.

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And that gives a visual overview of all the time zones in the world at the same time. Find a comprehensive job description template and best practices in this post. You’ll learn about the key responsibilities, qualifications, and skills required for an AWS developer role, including hard skills and soft skills. Learn how to write an effective Ruby on Rails developer job description, including key qualifications and responsibilities, and sample job description template.

Still, some form of meetings is vital for organizations looking to keep the connection and interaction across distributed teams. And a lot of people will try to have teams that really overlap a lot, even though they are in other time zones. Have them working on separate things with just a small amount of overlap when the times are convenient. There are a lot of different scenarios that we working remotely in a different time zone could play out here, but the thing to keep in mind is try organizing your team so that it’s less painful. The main project management tools include Trello, Basecamp, and Asana, which keep track of what everyone is working on as it progresses through the pipeline. Teams can use Slack for better communication, which will also assist you overcome the disadvantages of a remote working team.

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Communication is critical when it comes to working across time zones. Moreover, companies should rethink the overall effectiveness of each meeting. It’s a good practice to schedule the meetings only for the exchange of information that can’t be communicated over a team chat app, a document, an email, or a memo. Sure, a team brainstorming session is most effective over a video conference, however, a general weekly update doesn’t necessarily require a 5 a.m. Now if you want to make yourself aware, of one of the tips that I recommend for doing that is visualize time zones. And there is a great app that one of the buffer developers developed called timezone.io.

• At Outstaffer, we help you hire, onboard and manage your global employees – compliantly.
• 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.
• So when you do have meetings or things that the team needs to know about, that everybody inputs that time into a shared calendar, then the time zone conversions are automatically done.
• Likewise, support your colleagues to discuss their work limits and work hours so you are aware of the different time zones in which you are all working.
• This is why we’re seeing a consistent increase in the number of distributed teams hiring globally.

As a result, your productivity will suffer, and neither you nor your client will be happy with the outcome. With this free app, you can leave short video messages for your team members (one or more). Your videos will be waiting for your team member when they can get to them. And best of all, Marco Polo is private, so you can build beyond-business connections in your freelancing world.

Clearly communicate expectations

Abi is one of the co-founders of Himalayas where he focuses on product and growth. In his spare time, he runs a YouTube channel, podcast, and blog focused on strategy and management. We’re Himalayas, a remote job board, that is focused on providing the best experience for remote job seekers and employers.

If they can’t access the file, they’ll have to wait for you to be online again. This can lead to increased frustration and lower productivity. The only way it can work is if you keep team meetings to a minimum, record them for those that can’t attend, and make attendance optional. If you really do need to have everyone there, try to pick a time that works for most people and then ask the remaining few if they can attend.

No one should feel compelled to be alert when working remotely constantly. Employees who do not establish clear work boundaries risk burning out, which negatively impacts the entire team’s productivity, creativity, and collaboration. Therefore, being open to different work schedules or adjusting your workday to accommodate different timezones will help create a middle ground. No one needs to be the night owl in the group all the time, and the teams can take turns digesting the schedule challenge. Besides, fixed schedules might make a group of people within a certain timezone constantly need to stay late. So Meta’s terms of use say that you cannot set up an account on Instagram if you are under 13.