Time zones can be a fickle thing. Despite attempts to reinvent time zones to make it easier for everyone around the world, we still can’t seem to come to a universal agreement. Generally, this isn’t too much of a problem as everyone understands the time zones in their region. In the United States, there’s a three-hour difference between the East and West. Easy.
But if you’re working on a remote team that’s scattered across the world, it gets trickier to remember what time it is for your colleague in Germany and another in India. Figuring out a good time for a work meeting with teammates from across the United States to Asia is a constant battle full of compromises where the majority time zone wins the Google Calendar booking more often than not.
Yet from a business point of view, it’s hard to argue against operating across multiple time zones. As much as there are challenges, there are numerous benefits that ultimately outweigh the hassle.
We’ll show you what those are, and how to work efficiently with teammates across different time zones in a way that’s productive (and not intrusive!). We’ll also show you some of the key tips to take into account to be more aware of the experiences of remote employees.
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Pros and Cons of Working in Multiple Time Zones
Compared to the advantages, the disadvantages of working in multiple time zones end up being minor inconveniences. This is evidenced by the fact that more and more companies are opting to work remotely, with research from Blueface predicting that remote work will rival office work by 2025.
Pros
One clear benefit for remote companies is the expanded talent pool. Hiring globally means you can get the best engineers, designers, marketers, etc. in the world and not just in your city, time zone, or even country. With this global team, you create more diversity of thought, which can result in more innovation and revenue.
But the benefits aren’t just limited to internal operations. A big advantage of a team working across multiple time zones is the fact that you can essentially run operations around the clock. If you’ve got all the time zones covered, that means someone in the world will always be working and serving customers without the need for late-night shifts.
Cons
Of course, not everything is best when it comes to collaborating across multiple time zones. With such a big gap between certain time zones, remote teams will inevitably experience delayed responses and difficulty scheduling meetings.
Beyond that, remote employees can also experience isolation as there’s no in-person interaction or activities like team lunches and happy hours. This is especially true if you’re the lone team member in a completely different time zone.
Waking up to a silent team chat, phone, or online communication tool, or conversely, in the middle of a hectic workday schedule for employees in other countries, can feel unsettling or overwhelming.
Read More: 9 Important Cross-Cultural Communication Tips for Remote Developers
How to Be Mindful of Teams in Different Time Zones
Here’s the truth about working with teams in different time zones: doing business as usual will not work. At least, it won’t be the optimal setup for your team. So here are some tips to consider if you want to build an aware and considerate culture as a multiple time zone remote team.
Ask: Is this meeting really necessary?
In an article in the Harvard Business Review, researchers from the Harvard Business School and Boston University argued for curtailing the modern “meeting madness.” In today’s work culture, it’s not uncommon to spend your entire day in meetings — executives spend up to 23 hours a week in meetings.
Sure, meetings are useful for communicating ideas. Engineering teams, in particular, require different types of meetings along various stages. At the same time, whenever you’re in a meeting you’re technically not getting any focused work done.
Although remote teams have the distinct advantage of not being able to walk up to a coworker’s desk to ask for a quick chat, meetings can still suck up a lot of time. Sometimes, that time might be in the early morning or late evening due to time zone differences.
This means it’s even more important to limit meetings so you’re not asking your teammates to stay up late or get up early, mixing up someone else’s schedule for a chat that might not even be all that productive.
Nothing’s worse than the feeling of getting up at 6 a.m. for a 15-minute chat that leaves you feeling like you haven’t accomplished anything. Be aware of other remote employees’ work situations, time zones, and physical settings.
So whenever you find yourself wanting a meeting, first ask yourself: is it really necessary? Can the information be communicated to other employees through an email, memo, or document instead? Or is it absolutely necessary to communicate verbally in real-time? If the answer to this last question is no, don’t schedule a meeting.
Read More: 14 Essential Work From Home Tips for a Successful Remote Experience
Ask: Do they have enough information?
In a team working from multiple time zones, communication can’t always happen simultaneously. There’s no room to clarify what you meant in real-time, and you don’t have the luxury of reading someone’s facial expression or tone of voice. In this context, well-written communication becomes a requirement.
For those used to working from the same time zone or physical space, considering the other person’s needs might not be a habitual way of working. For example, if someone has trouble accessing a file, they can ping you and you can fix it right away.
But what if your remote colleague is going to see your message hours later and you’ll be out of your (home) office by then? If they run into trouble with access, they’ll have to wait another day until they can do the work (or you’ll be receiving a late-night phone call!). This loss of productivity — and increase in frustration — can add up quickly.
When communicating with a team member who lives in a different time zone, always ask yourself if they have enough information, clarity, and access to do their work. Expecting someone to understand what you meant with little clarification can lead to misunderstanding, and in the worst-case scenario, a day of wasted work.
Ask: How can we do this asynchronously?
Another way to be mindful of different time zones — and disregard the clock — is to default to asynchronous communication. By setting a clear expectation that communication won’t always happen synchronously, you can take the pressure away from people in different time zones to always be “on-call” in case someone needs their response.
An asynchronous-first team communication style can be very beneficial for remote teams working on projects across different time zones. This communication method can make everyone take a step back before pinging their co-workers, and also put extra thought into their written communication to account for the gap between responses.
Read More: How to Create a Remote Work Culture That’s Supportive, Positive & Fun
Case Studies: How to Work Autonomously and Asynchronously Across Time Zones
Whether you’ve built an asynchronous culture or not, the nature of working across time zones necessitates it to a degree. Another side effect of a multi-time zone team is increased autonomy. When a team can’t rely on synchronous communication, it increases the need to get work done without help.
Getting used to higher autonomy and asynchronous communication can be a challenge for remote teams because it’s a switch from the standard way of working. But more and more companies are doing this –– and doing this well. Let’s look at some examples.
Zapier
As a distributed team now going on eight years in operation, Zapier has always worked in different time zones –– initially across the United States and now in 17 time zones across 24 countries. Over the years, the company’s co-founder and CEO Wade Foster learned that there are three key ingredients to do this successfully:
Team: The most important thing is to assemble a group of people who thrive on working autonomously and can get things done without being told. You also need people who don’t depend on the workplace for social connections, as working remotely can be isolating.
Tools: Another vital ingredient for working in different time zones is to use tools that enable the team to collaborate efficiently. For Zapier, these include Zoom for video calls, Quip for an internal knowledge base, and Trello and Airtable for project management.
Process: The last component that ties everything together is to have a process on how to work as a distributed team. Communicating this from the get-go sets good guidelines and gives the team a clear direction.
Read More: An Immersive Virtual Retreat Idea: Unpacking MURAL’s Playbook
Help Scout
Design is an area where collaboration is essential. But the design team at Help Scout is spread out across five time zones, making creative collaboration a challenge. So how do they do it? Here are some ways they stay connected remotely, as explained by Buzz Usborne, a product designer on the team.
Use recorded videos and work-in-progress (WIP) documents: Because there’s such a need to explain and show concepts in design, Help Scout uses recorded videos with tools like Loom and Soapbox for their daily walkthroughs.
This way, team members can explain their ideas as they show their work on Sketch or InVision without the need for a real-time meeting. Similarly, WIP documents are useful for designers in different time zones to see where everyone is on a given day. For this, they use Dropbox Paper.
Find community and face-to-face time: Creative inspiration often comes from staying connected to your community. Though this can be difficult for remote teams to maintain, it also makes it important to make a conscious effort to find outlets through things like conferences and other local events.
And ultimately, occasional face-to-face time is necessary and good for sparking collaboration –– Help Scout does this by setting up a dedicated time for meetings while also making sure to record them for those who can’t join due to time zone differences.
Arc
The Arc team is set up to be remote-friendly. With team members in eight cities and four time zones, we’re used to running meetings remotely. Things that we’ve found helpful include:
Meetings are prioritized during the cross-over hours: We’re not fans of too many meetings, but if we need to have them, we try to schedule them in the main time zone cross-over period. This way, nobody needs to unnecessarily extend their working hours. (For social bonding meetings — like our regular “knowledge sharings” — we also order people their time-appropriate meal to munch on during the video call, whether it’s breakfast or dinner!)
Videocalls mean the camera is on: When we’re doing a meeting, the company default is for everyone to turn their video on. This way, we can see each other’s body language, as well as hands raised to indicate a desire to speak next.
Standardize Slack use: Make the whole company aware of which channel is used for which content. Additionally, some of Arc’s teams have a standardized set of emoji reactions to messages. These emojis might mean “I’m finished working on that”, “I agree with your idea”, or “Let me think about it some more and get back to you” — as well as many others besides.
It’s particularly helpful for checking on the status of tasks at a glance (and also helps when not everybody in the team has the same native language).
Give explicit and reasonable deadlines: When working together, write down the due date for the activity, even if it’s something as small as wanting other peoples’ opinions on some wording. When setting this deadline, take into account your remote team members: if the deadline is outside of their working hours, let them know that you’re not expecting them to drop everything to help out. Make your expectations clear!
Meeting kickoffs are written: For most meetings, we send a written prompt (or other background information) to meeting attendees in advance. This helps everyone not only to be on the same page for the meeting agenda but also gets everyone’s creative ideas flowing by the time the meeting starts.
Read More: Managing a Distributed Software Development Team: 5 Lessons Learned
Strike the Right Balance Between Asynchronous and Synchronous Communications
As the above example from Help Scout’s design team demonstrates, working across time zones doesn’t mean you have to work 100% asynchronously. The value in real-time chat doesn’t go away for remote teams — it just takes extra effort to do it effectively.
With that in mind, here are some of the best tips to round up the post on how to work across different time zones while striking the right balance between asynchronous and synchronous communications:
- Limit meetings as much as possible — reserve them for when they’re truly necessary
- Foster a culture of well-written communication so everyone has access to information (and send information in advance of meetings)
- Default to asynchronous communication and set clear expectations on working autonomously
- Use the right tools and create processes to facilitate communication across different time zones
- Schedule the occasional face-to-face time, especially for one-on-ones and creative collaboration
- Make sure your team stays connected to their community — offering co-working and conference stipends can be especially helpful
Have any other tips? Let us know in the comments below!
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