How to Manage People in Different Time Zones

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challenges of working in different time zone

A common drawback to managing a team that operates across time zones is the lack of space for sharing insight about work progress. 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.

How Do You Address the Challenges of Working in Different Time Zones in Remote Work Setting?

To make a remote team function, there is a need for a clear communication strategy to be established. This can be a very challenging task especially when everyone is scattered around the world, speaking different languages and cultural differences. Enforcing and executing assigned tasks where there isn’t proper effective communication can be a daunting experience. In such situations, time and resources which could have been allocated somewhere else are usually wasted on trying to get the job done. Maintaining culture is a vital component of every company’s business success, but it is especially critical for totally remote teams. Understanding the distinctions between creating and maintaining a dynamic culture in a remote work setting vs an office-based environment is of utmost importance and companies can not ignore it.

challenges of working in different time zone

Let’s look at how you can effectively manage the timezones to aid your organization’s productivity. But today, for many fully distributed teams and companies that have employees based in a hodgepodge of places worldwide, working remotely in a different time zone working across multiple time zones has become a daily reality. Businesses likely have even more schedules to juggle, with some workers awake and logging in for the day while others are just signing off.

Tips for working remotely in a different time zone

Each of those live in Async—an in-house tool that gives everyone a set place to write anything they need to share with the entire team and forces us to “work in public.” In other words, communicate, and make sure everyone knows what you’re working on. No matter how independently you can work, and how hard you try to stay connected, you won’t be in the flow of what everyone’s doing unless you have a team chat tool. “At TechCrunch and The Next Web, having a central point of contact is critical,” says Russell. “Tools like Slack, Convo and HipChat make that possible in a way that it never really was a few years ago.” It’s possible to hire people around the globe and still have your whole team working 9-to-5 at your office’s time zone—after all, plenty of people work night shifts—but it’s not optimal.

If remote employees don’t have overlap in work hours, there can be a lag between a question being asked and answered. Some of the best practice examples suggest encouraging employees to craft their own shared experiences in company team chat apps. The most popular company channels in team chat apps usually include those public, #random channels, or some more specific channels that gather people who share the same interests (e.g. #books, #gaming, #memes). Ideally, these virtual spaces would inspire teams to add to the informal chat thread, regardless of the time they logged in. When working to establish functional global teams, organizations need to primarily focus on optimizing their communication.

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