Working Across Time Zones: Best Practices and Tools

Remember that to make this way of working successful, you will need a healthy mix of flexibility, understanding, and an agile approach. 🎓 To learn more about the pros and cons of asynchronous communication for remote teams, be sure to check out our in-depth guide on the blog. A common drawback to managing a team that operates across time zones is the lack of space for sharing insight about work progress. The already limited communication opportunities leave no room for staff to share what they’re working on, talk about ideas, or future plans.

Naturally, organizations jumped at the opportunity to select from a global pool of talent which is, essentially, the key factor that led to the formation of teams that span across different time zones. Still, as much as it might be pretty seamless for a tech company to adjust their operations to working across time zones, for some industries and teams, this practice is simply not viable. Let’s get a more detailed look at what types of teams are leading the way in working across time zones. As remote work and distributed teams are becoming more common, organizations are looking into ways to optimize their structure and operations to better align with the demands of diverse teams working across time zones. Time zone conversion tools allow you to stay in sync with the global clock, ensuring accurate time zone conversions at a glance. With a simple search or a click of a button, you can convert meeting times, deadlines, and important events to align seamlessly with team members across various time zones.

Access to a global talent pool

For example, implementing a virtual project management platform can help teams coordinate assignments, track individuals’ progress on tasks, and boost overall efficiency. These chat apps offer real-time messaging, file sharing, channel-based communication, and integrations with other productivity tools, allowing teams to collaborate, discuss projects, and share updates seamlessly. Remember to check the accuracy of the time zone information and consider any potential daylight saving time adjustments when using these tools, as time zones can change periodically. From world clocks and time zone converters to calendar integration for seamless adjustments, these tools facilitate seamless adjustments and enhance remote collaboration. Collaboration tools are powerful resources for real-time updates and seamless communication within teams or across organizations, such as Slack, Trello, Asana, Monday, Google Workspaces, etc.

If one is not available, best practice is to use UTC as the implicit zone offset for conversions of this nature. This is because the values are exactly centered in the range of possibilities and because representation internally (as computer time) is usually based on UTC. Since a single reference point has been used it may be possible to unwind the change later even if erroneous conversion takes place. When working with multiple documents from various sources, the “implicit” offset of the document may vary widely from that of the implementation doing the processing. If one wishes to write a comparison between the value of and , then the two values must be reconciled to use the same reference point.

The Benefits of Working Across Time Zones

Working in an office (or with the same work hours) is filled with impromptu moments that break up your day, many of which are unwanted distractions. Other moments, like grabbing lunch https://remotemode.net/ with colleagues, are a great way to break up the day. This is why study after study after study has shown remote workers to be more productive than their in-office colleagues.

• There are many features of the world that I simply cannot wrap my head around, and one of these has always been time zones.
• As Hubspot suggests, it’s even a good idea to say the deadline in both your timezone, and theirs, so there’s no confusion.
• You have to navigate not just the time difference but the difference in language, accent, and even energy levels.
• Maintaining culture is a vital component of every company’s business success, but it is especially critical for totally remote teams.
• Some people’s answer is that they don’t know how to work across many time zones in spite of having a time zone manager.
• One of the first and easiest things you can do to make asynchronous communication smooth is to set your working hours, and to make those hours easily discoverable to your teammates.
• Despite the obvious challenges, including the problem of scheduling meetings across time zones with extreme time differences, the benefits still largely outweigh the limitations — at least from a business perspective.

“Be ready to jump on a call/video-call without having to schedule a time for it,” Ronnqvist Ahmadi advises. “Let your team know you’re available over Slack (or whichever tool you use), and build in ‘air-time’ in your agenda for check-ins https://remotemode.net/blog/10-tips-on-working-in-different-time-zones/ or quick chats.” 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.

What Is People Ops?

You have to navigate not just the time difference but the difference in language, accent, and even energy levels. The person on the other end of the Teams or Zoom call is having their last call of the day and you are just getting started with the highest possible energy level or vice versa. Of course, for organizations working across time zones, this type of effort would involve coming up with creative ways to have everyone on board and involved in the conversation. It takes really getting to know your team members and tapping into their shared interests to get the casual conversation going. One-off videos and screen captures shouldn’t be the only place that teammates can turn for information and context in real time.

• Unfortunately, XML Schema date and time types do not provide for Olson IDs, so most time operations cannot use TZIDs directly.
• Read our guide on remote collaboration to learn how to overcome these challenges.
• For the small subset of places that have more than one time zone, we estimated the share of the population in each time zone based on government websites and data from City Population.