Zapier are on a mission to make automation easy and accessible to everyone at work. With over 400 remote employees spread across 30 countries, Zapier is one of the largest fully remote companies. They know what they’re doing and write great guides on how to get the most out of remote work. While it may seem strange to let people work at all times of the day, you’re already going to be doing that indirectly by working across time zones. Flexible workers hours have been proven to reduce burnout, stress levels, and psychological distress while increasing job satisfaction.
- Planning meetings across time zones might sound so painful that you’d rather just never have meetings—but don’t do that either.
- It makes scheduling meetings difficult, but we can also hand off work to keep the wheels turning 24/7.
- If you’re feeling like you’re always reacting, then here’s one change you can make.
These negatives aren’t helpful for retaining employees or building a positive company culture. The modern shift to a remote-heavy work model has put a novel kind of pressure on teams as they strive to stay on the same page. Flexible schedules and different time zones can make it difficult to be on the clock at the same time — let alone to collaborate together.
Save Time
Timezone messages like the one above can help you be mindful of what to send when to send it, and if your message is urgent enough to send as soon as possible. For example, if you have a few messages you want to send, but notice it’s 9 p.m. In another employee’s timezone, you might either want to avoid sending til the morning or schedule an email. When it comes to quick communication some tools, like Slack, will even give you a notification before or after you send a message stating which timezone your recipient is in. “When you work in different timezones, it’s important to be aware of when you’re sending a message or email,” says Rebecca White, a junior writer for the HubSpot Blog.
“It usually isn’t necessary, but definitely helps to build morale and keep spirits high when we can put faces to names and not feel so lonely in our remote settings,” Rike said. I shifted roles this year, so I don’t do nearly as much product research as I used to. We saw how working remotely across various time zones can be both rewarding and challenging. It’s important to take care of yourself and establish a healthy work-life balance.
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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. 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 it comes to working remotely with teams across different time zones, the most important thing is to be mindful, empathetic, and respectful. Even the most introverted remote workers need social interaction, humans just aren’t designed for solitude. It’s easy enough to understand time zones where you live, but if you’re working in a remote team spread across the world, it gets harder to remember what time it is for your team members. When compared against the benefits, the downsides of working across several time zones are minor inconveniences. This is proven by the fact that an increasing number of businesses are electing to work remotely, with Blueface research estimating that remote work would rival office labour by 2025. It becomes easier to manage when course correction is required, and when team members go above and above to reinforce the culture, exemplifying those acts to the rest of the team becomes easier than ever.
Greenwich Mean Time
“There’s a give and take. So long as you check with the person on their preferences, it’s fine to ask. Some might even prefer to work a non-standard shift anyway,” Kelly explains. In today’s workplace, diversity breeds new and unique ideas, allows us to look at our campaigns from different points of working remotely in a different time zone view, and benefits companies financially. In fact, by 2022, Gartner predicts that 75% of businesses with diverse frontline decision-makers will exceed their financial targets. When you think of a meeting, it evokes images of well-dressed employees gathered around conference tables in the same space.
Although I said I can go wherever I want, there are some limitations depending on the job that you are doing and the company you are working for. I am writing this article at the weekend since I can do this perfectly asynchronous. But being Growth and Customer Success Manager at Beelance, I have to be there for our clients. This means I have to work a lot synchronously thus Belgian office hours in Indonesia.
Tips for Working with Teammates in Different timezones
“When there were 4 people, everyone knew everything. When there are 75 people, that no longer scales,” he says. It might not be possible—or even desirable—for each team member to take ownership of part of your company’s work, but you can break projects up in a way that everyone has their own specific area to focus on. This strategy makes your projects asynchronous, which remote developer Mutahhir Ali Hayat suggests is the best way to make remote development work out. It makes scheduling meetings difficult, but we can also hand off work to keep the wheels turning 24/7. Jon Russell, a Bangkok-based reporter for TechCrunch, says remote work is what enables their site to run a 24-hour newsroom. “When it comes to online publishing, being in different places isn’t so strange,” says Russell.
- Knowing the difference between Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time alone isn’t enough anymore.
- 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.
- Learn how to write an effective Ruby on Rails developer job description, including key qualifications and responsibilities, and sample job description template.
- As we know, this usually leads to stale conversations and very awkward silences, especially, if people don’t know each other well yet.
- This tip also applies to block out chaotic family members at home or even for those moments on Friday when everyone is feeling chattier at work.
- These meetings can also be recorded and captioned to ensure any team member that did miss out on them can still receive that essential information.
- Working during one chunk of the day caters to your timezone, followed by another shift that caters to another team’s timezone, is often called a split shift.
