By sampay Content
At first, the remote workforce offered the perfect way for companies to reduce costs until they realized additional benefits such as global talent and diversity-led innovation. Post your remote job ad on We Work Remotely, the largest remote work community in the world. You’ll find candidates who thrive on autonomous work and don’t require hand-holding to help your team get to the next level. Get everyone using the same channels to keep conversations centralized, organized, and accessible. You’ll have early birds, night owls, and employees who fall somewhere in between. You may also have team members who like working split shifts, where they work part of the morning, take time off to run errands or pick up their kids from school, then continue working at night. To avoid team blockers related to timezones, one thing Susanne Ronnqvist Ahmadi, HubSpot’s Vice President of International Marketing, says you should aim to have a flexible schedule at certain points of the day.
Earlier in my career, I have made that mistake, and tried to attend every possible meeting. My teams were spread over 12 timezones, which means I was awake around the clock, which made me tired all the time, inevitably inefficient and then I just burnt out. Even though I was “attending” the meetings, I wasn’t there for my team. The main project management tools include Trello, Basecamp, and Asana, which keep track of what everyone is working on as it progresses through the pipeline. Teams can use Slack for better communication, which will also assist you overcome the disadvantages of a remote working team. In your remote developer job, you can use the tools and practices that are the best fit and make working remotely a pleasurable experience for everybody. It’s nearly hard to arrange everyone to meet at the same time without inconveniencing someone if you don’t have team members working in overlapping time zones.
Here are five etiquette rules for working across time zones:
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. Engineering teams, in particular, requiredifferent types of meetings along various stages. At the same time, whenever you’re in a meeting you’re technically not getting anyfocusedwork done. Use this article as your guide to overcome these challenges and you’ll be well on your way to building strong relationships across time zones. They were created in the nineteenth century because the world needed a unified system to keep track of time.
Having the right kind of gear empowers remote employees to actively participate in the conversation—to literally be seen and heard. Every time a team member has to ping another team member on Slack to ask a question , that distraction can easily take the second team member out of “the zone” for 20 minutes or more. Multiply that by a few “taps on the shoulder” each day, and you’re looking at working across time zones entire work days of compromised productivity. Each team member shares what they accomplished the previous week, what they’re planning to work on in the coming week, and what blockers stand in their way. This takes practice to be able to do well, but now that we’ve all gotten good at it, it’s an incredibly powerful way to distill the most important things that the team needs to know about.
Better Meetings
Now this leads me into my next tip, which is really start thinking in multiple time zones. If you’re working with a global team, it’s good to heighten your awareness of what time it is for people in different parts of the world that you’re working with. For instance, I work with Gretchen every single day and I start the work with her at 6 p.m. These are the kinds of things that it’s just good to keep in mind with your teammates. For teams struggling to make heads or tails of time zones, you can add working hours for each person so it’s clear what times overlap for meetings and phone calls to be scheduled.
- This takes practice to be able to do well, but now that we’ve all gotten good at it, it’s an incredibly powerful way to distill the most important things that the team needs to know about.
- RECORD MEETINGS.On global teams, not everybody can make every, single meeting.
- This leads to a better run company, less stress, and higher quality work.
- While the digital workspace can perfectly support all the work processes, the social component takes the biggest hit in organizations promoting a remote-first work culture.