How to manage teams across time zones
Be flexible. Life happens and remote work allows us the flexibility to deal with it and still be productive. Respect that autonomy and set expectations for hitting goals regardless of what pops up. Set the expectation that anyone, no matter who it is, can ask for help when they need it.
Respect employees’ time
One con of multi-time zone teams is that it’s hard to manage meetings. If you primarily work with the 4 largest English speaking countries, the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia, plus throw in Singapore, and you’re looking at someone in almost every hemisphere. You simply aren’t going to be able to meet without someone having to be there at an ungodly midnight hour. Only meet when it’s crucial to collaborate, and try to narrow down the guest list to only the critical stakeholders. Don’t hold the meeting if the decision-maker can’t make it. If it’s crucial to have attendees from 3 or 4 hemispheres,
Leverage the benefits
Employees across time zones extends the working hours of your business. All of a sudden, 24/7 customer service could give a serious competitive advantage. Publishing breaking news is a possibility. Fixing bugs immediately without having to wake up engineers keeps people rested and focused. Enjoy the benefits of a longer working day and use the full spectrum of the day with your distributed team. Plus, use the diversity of your global team for innovative, creative ideas you may not have thought of with a homogenous team.
Use a meeting planning tool
There are a ton of world time zone meeting planners like this one out there, I bookmark one that’s familiar to me now.
Use a meeting planner
Select up to 3 cities and get a 72-hour view of the most convenient overlapping times
Five more tips for collaborating successfully with employees across multiple time zones:
Clearly communicate expectations: It's important to set expectations for how employees should check in and collaborate with their team members in different time zones – when is it appropriate to ask for something outside of normal work hours?
Use technology to your advantage: Zoom and Slack and the Gsuite can do sooo much more than we think. From automations and personalization to tying it all together with Zapier, internal organization should be a breeze. Make it standard for employees to put their timezone or location in their Slack profile. Add extra time zones to your Google calendar in Settings. Use transcription services like Otter to automatically take notes.
Set boundaries: Be clear about when they should be available and that when they’re off, they are expected to be "off the clock." Prevent burnout and ensure that everyone has time to rest and recharge.
Be flexible: Don't be afraid to loosen up when it comes to accommodating the needs of your team members in different time zones. You may have to flex a deadline, let someone sleep in or rotate the meetings where one person gets the poorly timed meeting.
Use asynchronous communication: While it's important to have synchronous communication (e.g. real-time conversations) with your team, you should also make use of asynchronous communication methods, such as email and messaging, to allow team members in different time zones to communicate and collaborate without the need to be online at the same time.
