10 Tips for Dealing with a Remote Team and Different Time Zones


When managing remote team members, the most important thing to keep in mind is to provide an inclusive experience for all. Likewise, when tasks are uploaded to asynchronous communication channels, set clear expectations on working autonomously.

How long does it take to fully adjust to a new time zone?

In general, it can take one day per time zone changed for circadian rhythms and sleep to get in sync.

Plus, even though we joke about wearing your PJs to meetings, there’s a lot more weight in professionalism in meetings as a remote team member. If you have to be “on” at all, then it should be during those calls with your team.

There’s more where that came from.

Make your online meetings more productive and fun with virtual meeting cards. CREATE A TEAM https://remotemode.net/ AGREEMENT.One of the major points in the team agreement is to always talk in one time zone.

tips working across time zones

Only by communicating their responsibilities clearly will the team be able to deliver the software product successfully and on-time. You’ll reduce your development costs and meet all deadlines, regardless of roadblocks. Let everyone put vacations and national holidays and other days when they won’t be working on the calendar. Once you have that calendar at hand, you’ll stop wondering why that developer hasn’t responded to you in over two days. When you have people working from different countries in the world, that means different holidays. Let me know if there’s anything big or a small hack that you’re doing to make your remote work and life a little better in the comments below.

Best practices for making remote work, work

Therefore, it’s crucial to encourage good, consistent documentation in asynchronous workplace tools, such as Notion, Google Drive, Slack, and project working across time zones management options like Asana or Trello. However, when you’re managing remote team members, not all communication happens in real-time.

It’s impossible to keep track of everyone’s local time zone all the time. You’ll probably have a mix of remote team members working from home and digital nomads who travel to a new locale every three months. 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. Aside from specifically discussing timezone-related needs and boundaries as needed, you can also mark your standard work hours on a team calendar — while encouraging colleagues to do the same. As someone who’s managed marketing initiatives at companies with remote employees and offices around the world, I’ve seen what successful and unsuccessful international collaboration looks like first hand. As remote work and satellite offices become more common, marketers are discovering that global teams can be incredibly beneficial to a company’s culture and ability to hire diverse talent.

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That’s why the last important strategy that works for us as a remote team is to get together in person often. At Buffer, we meet somewhere in the world once a year for a weeklong company retreat.

tips working across time zones

Spell out your location in introductions, or speak up when a team is setting up recurring meetings. It’s all part of the challenges of working in different time zones, but it’s easily resolvable. Ana Erkic is a team communication and collaboration writer. When she is not researching the most productive collaboration techniques, she can usually be found trying out the latest team chat and collaboration tools and apps. As the world is moving toward a fully distributed work model, there’s still plenty of value in in-person team meetups.