The trick is to understand the rhythm of each remote office and each remote worker to get the most work done during the workweek. Stay in touch and don’t forget to utilize all your resources to make working in different time zones a breeze. Working across time zones brings unique challenges rarely encountered within the more traditional work models.
To help your distributed workforce connect, consider facilitating live meetups when possible. That might not be enough to schedule meetings across a number of time zones, but it’s a quick way to figure out if you’re ok to call your boss at 6 p.m. It’s not only employees who can potentially benefit from working across time zones—this arrangement also allows distributed groups to be more responsive and available when customers need help. Working across time zones can yield benefits for both employees and employers, from improving work-life balance to widening the talent pool for new hires. Beyond that, you can have a flexible team meeting schedule for different members based on their requirements. You can have one window of overlapping times where most of the employees can sync with each other.
Common Mistakes When Working With a Dispersed Team
It is common to waste a lot of time waiting for confirmation when booking appointments or meetings with remote team members..A time zone difference makes it even more difficult to get a real-time response. You will likely not hear from the other parties until the next business day if they live on the other side of the world. With a split schedule, you can be more available for meetings with colleagues in different time zones without ignoring your local team. Furthermore, you will be able to stay in touch with your international department without staying up all night. It is equally important for managers to schedule meetings within their teams’ working hours. Be sure that your entire team is able to find times that work for all of them.
It’s also important to be aware of any language barriers that clients might have. When there is a language barrier, it just takes a little extra time to make sure both parties understand what is expected. The digital age brought with it the ability to receive immediate responses. https://remotemode.net/ Oh, ye who think a one-hour time conversion is simpler than an eight-hour one. My brain likes to convert the wrong direction when I’m dealing with just an hour or two. That smartphone in your pocket is good for so much more than Candy Crush, selfies, and Instagram.
Working Across Multiple Time Zones: Tools and Strategies That Help Connect
It might seem silly to talk about it but any business owner who deals with non-local clients will tell you of the confusion of setting phone or online meetings with some customers. The Internet has made it possible for businesses to sell globally, but that creates the challenge of dealing with customers working remotely in a different time zone in different time zones. Here are seven tips to make it easier to communicate with and serve customers in other parts of the country or world. One of the things often discussed as an underlying challenge for outsourcing is dealing with Time zone and communication with your outsourced team.
- I also put in a few hours each afternoon writing and scheduling client appointments (for after my vacation).
- Some major challenges of working in different time zones include lack of real-time communication, collaboration at unexpected hours, and lack of team bonding due to no in-person meetings or interactions.
- In this blog, we have discussed some crucial challenges of working in different time zones in the remote work setting and how to address them.
- The Head of Remote position sits on the organization’s leadership team and is responsible for building and maintaining remote company culture and employee experience.
- I’ve found that I’m not always at my best during weird hours and so my notes become all the more important.
Make your team get oriented just like you would do for your internal employees. Make them understand your vision, mission and why the things you are doing are important. With the right checks in place which we have elaborated in this blog, you can get the best out of your team without getting your guard down. There’s a major difference between work habits in Europe, the U.S., Scandinavia, and Southeast Asia. Some regions take lunch at different times, take longer breaks, or don’t work traditional hours.
