This is a massive benefit, even if you are located in a hub like San Francisco or New York, chances are the best person for the job doesn’t live within commuting distance of your office. In this article, you’ll learn about the benefits and challenges of working across time zones, as well as the best practices you need to follow. 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. Microsoft continues to evolve and create new applications and updated features to benefit the evolving workplace. Teams is a popular addition that many companies have started to benefit from, especially as they needed to reach people in varying locations.
- Handing the headache over to a professional employer organization (PEO), like ExtensisHR, can help.
- Ideally, your company will set up Google Drive, Dropbox, or whatever file-sharing system you use so files are automatically accessible to the entire company.
- Plus you can play trivia games, host movie-watching parties, and take a virtual cooking class or cocktail mixing class together.
- If you are providing information, invest the additional time upfront to answer any questions or solve any issues you think the person may have ahead of time.
- Even between the east and west coast of the United States, there is a three-hour time difference.
It was first suggested by Andreas Klinger, CTO at On Deck, and pioneered by GitLab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij and Darren Murph. 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. When everyone lives in different time zones, writing, planning, and documentation tend to become the default behavior for remote employees. This means people who were offline can dive into documentation to catch up, rather than having to wait for answers. When you don’t need to consider time zones, you can attract and hire the best talent regardless of location.
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To maximize their procedures and general culture, internationally distributed teams typically choose asynchronous collaboration as their preferred approach. This is not unexpected considering that the adaptability of asynchronous collaboration is the appropriate solution to the issues of time zone management. Questions over how to ensure equal input, how to streamline meetings, and how to collaborate effectively are all valid concerns.
The most popular activities usually involve a mix of problem solving, competition, and laughter. Let’s Roam has many options, like the popular Scavenger Hunts, that get teams out running around and doing a mix of exploring and completing challenges. Escape Rooms and Murder Mystery experiences are fun options that include all of those things. People are challenged to work together to solve puzzles, find clues, and do something that is not work-related but still builds stronger relationships and bonds overall. By organizing ahead of time, you’ll be able to maximize the time of all of the attendees no matter where they are located and it will help keep the engagement levels up during the meeting.
Inconsistent collaboration and communication
This can be through phone calls, video chats or even using an instant messaging platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Asynchronous communication means working without being in direct contact with people, such as through email, online chat, or by sending video messages such as Loom videos. If your team works in different time zones, then you will need to communicate asynchronously most of the time.
With our platform of pre-configured talent acquisition and talent management solutions, maximize the potential of your company’s greatest asset—your people. Eastern Standard Time (EST) covers the states in the eastern part of North America and runs from Maine to Florida, while Central Standard Time (CST) includes Texas up to Montana. Mountain Standard Time (MST) spans Utah’s Rocky Mountains all the way over to Arizona, and Pacific Standard Time (PST) includes California and Nevada to Washington State. There’s no need to wait for a conference call or meeting to start talking when you work together from the same office.
Implement a mindful approach, when Booking Meetings Across Time Zones
They’re proudly a remote-first company and took full advantage of remote collaboration long before coronavirus. They’re also huge advocates of remote and asynchronous work and recognized early that when implemented effectively, remote collaboration is the key to innovation in the competitive software development landscape. GitLab might be the world’s largest fully distributed company with 1,400+ remote workers in 65+ countries. More than 30 million users and 100,000 organizations from startups to global enterprise organizations use GitLab to deliver great software at new speeds. 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.
Bringing your team together for a weekly, monthly, or even annual working remotely in a different time zone meet-up can be a productive and enlightening experience.