You could create an internal wiki for documenting lessons learned or managing your team’s knowledge and workflows. This way, you can set a status, assign the specific teammates who need to see this information as well as link out to relevant files, documents, and even code repos. As an added tip, try to set an ‘official’ time zone that’s used for meeting schedules. This way you won’t show up three hours early for a meeting (or end up scrambling to join one you thought started later on).
While operating with time zone differences has its benefits, it’s also challenging. Particularly if you don’t introduce new processes to manage a truly global team. Of course, for companies that work across time zones, this sort of endeavor would include devising clever ways to get everyone on board and participate in the dialogue.
Information silos: Leverage your knowledge management tools and processes
Similarly, working across time zones is beneficial to companies on a larger, operational level. 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.
Founded in 2011, Help Scout has been a fully remote company from day 1 and is powering 12,000+ teams in 140+ countries. They’re proudly a remote-first company and took full advantage of remote collaboration long before coronavirus. They’re also huge advocates of remote and asynchronous work and working remotely in a different time zone recognized early that when implemented effectively, remote collaboration is the key to innovation in the competitive software development landscape. When it comes to working remotely with teams across different time zones, the most important thing is to be mindful, empathetic, and respectful.
Effective Remote Communication in 2022: Tips, Methods and Tools
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. Then, if you want another easy way to know what time it is everywhere your team’s located, you can turn on the World clock in the Calendar Labs settings. In other words, communicate, and make sure everyone knows what you’re working on. Staying up a bit late or getting up an hour earlier isn’t a bad tradeoff for a job you love, but how about 2 a.m.? That’s what The Year Without Pants author, Berkun, encountered when he worked at Automattic. “My team had hit the natural limits of space and time on planet earth,” Berkun says.
When working with a distributed team, you don’t have to limit yourself to hiring locally. Instead of settling for local talent, remote workers give your company access to the best people in the world no matter where they are located. The post outlines how to build an effective time zone agnostic team as a company leader, people manager, colleague, and as a geographically remote person. This is foundational to working in a distributed team spread across time zones where quick check-ins aren’t feasible.
Difficulty in scheduling meetings
A project management tool that supports time zones is particularly useful here. Teams employing a globally distributed workforce should pay special attention to learning and optimizing for different cultural specifics. Your employees’ communication styles, collaboration methods, and work schedules are largely impacted by their cultural, religious, and ethnic backgrounds.
Managing teams across multiple time zones seems to be one of the most common frustrations for many of the remote and hybrid employees that I’ve worked with. When push comes to shove, however, it comes down to creating guidelines for your business to help get everyone on the same page and to work together in the best way possible. It’s quickly becoming the ‘new normal’ for companies and teams to be split across cities, countries, and even time zones. And while there’s no denying the many benefits of working remotely, mismatched schedules, repetitive communication, and out-of-sync teams don’t make the list. 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 save the time zones you work with most to have an easy way to switch between them.
