6 Tips to Ace Working Remotely in Different Time Zones

Certain countries refrain from using a given scheme with its time standard unchanged. For example, Iceland, Russia, Turkey, China, Japan, and India don’t follow such trends. When you’re working in a distributed fashion, learning to be an effective async communicator is going to be the biggest factor in your success. You might find that there’s no perfect time for your team, but at least you’ll find options that aren’t excruciating. Plus, you can add the correct time to your calendar in just a click, if you’d like. Here are some popular ways to use Slack with app automation tool Zapier to automatically share activity in your channels so everyone knows what’s going on.

Mastering Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Communication

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. Aside from the few weeks every year when we’re all together at our company retreats, there’s always someone at Zapier awake and working. Time zone coverage is just something that’s automatically possible with distributed teams.

If colleagues are close by, try asking them to work together at one desk so they can easily collaborate on projects as necessary. TimeandDate.com’s World Clock Meeting Planner won’t win any design awards, but it makes time shift scheduling straightforward. 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.

Be mindful when scheduling meetings

1. To work across time zones, you need to take into account the main nuances given above, think over workflow in advance, quickly adapt and solve problems.
2. Jeff Atwood found that when he started Stack Overflow programming on his own turned into a lonely job.
3. We saw how working remotely across various time zones can be both rewarding and challenging.
4. Work together, even if there is a time gap, and you’ll find that the old adage “two are better than one” is still true.
5. You’ll need to account for different time zones, work styles, and cultural norms in your management style.

This means that if one team member works while another is sleeping, it does not mean they can’t communicate or collaborate with each other effectively (unless this pattern repeats itself for several weeks). His solution was to have a coding partner, someone he’d bounce ideas off of and check in with about project progress. Work together, even if there is a time gap, and you’ll find that the old adage “two are better than one” is still true.

Pro: Time and place freedom boosts productivity

The most suitable time should be considered in advance, especially if employees from different time zones are involved. As a basis, you can take a certain time zone, to which all employees will adjust. Various spheres of business activity can allow working remotely by choosing the model of the workflow organization that is approaching the most. As a result, the employer has ample facilities in the personnel reserve selection, creating a team of strong players, regardless of the residence place.

There is no need to spend time and money on commuting to the workplace, changing a residence place for the career’s sake, changing priorities in life, etc. We often assume when we’re talking to someone new that they’re in the same time zone as us. When scheduling a meeting or call with remote team members, make sure to ask them what time zone they are in so that you can account for any time difference with their local time when you schedule. It’s impossible to overstate how crucial Slack—a team chat app that makes it easy to search through all of your team’s messages—is living and working in different time zones to remote teams. It’s the one app that comes up in nearly every discussion of how to make remote teams work.

If the new hire is in a different time zone than the manager, it’s critical for the manager to clearly lay out all applicable goals, expectations, and priorities. One of Filippo’s favorite tools that he uses to respect his team’s time is the “send later” option both in Slack and email. “That, as well as everyone setting their working hours and turning off notifications outside of those hours, can really help to create and maintain a healthy work environment,” he said. In this article, we’ll explore the best practices for working across time zones, identifying the main challenges and how to navigate them. Working across time zones requires a certain level of flexibility and compromise. Sometimes, you may need to adjust your schedule to accommodate a meeting or deadline for a colleague in a different time zone.