By the time your clients wake up, you will have finished most of your work and still have three hours left to sync up with them. Culture, weather, internet speed and safety are important as well when determining where to live, and subsequently the time zone you’ll work from. Nomadlist is a great website for digital nomads to track these variables. They were created in the nineteenth century because the world needed a unified system to keep track of time. To work effectively with a remote team, you’ll need to put in the effort and build strong relationships across time zones. Becoming a digital nomad, although alluring, poses several distinctive challenges.
How to Work Best across Multiple Timezones (Tips That Work)
If there are different time zones represented within the discussion, try to be as precise as possible regarding times and dates. When referring to a specific time, everyone reading your message needs to be aware of it. The process of synchronized communication (“sync”) allows colleagues to respond and provide feedback in real-time. You can do this via phone calls, video chats, or even using an instant messaging platform like Slack or Microsoft Teams. Consider a variety of different activities, from the usual Zoom calls to online games, book/movie clubs, and more. To help this workflow, check out recommended remote team communication best practice.
- In other words, communicate, and make sure everyone knows what you’re working on.
- If a company has the option to organize face-to-face retreats or meetings, that’s definitely the way to go.
- There is also now a setting for ‘World Clock.’ Tick the box for World Clock to have it shown, and you can even ‘add a time zone’ there.
- “Setting the stage with all stakeholders at the beginning of a project and setting expectations on response times can keep everyone on track,” Hoffbauer said.
- The final strategy to maintain a healthy work-life balance when working in a different time zone is to be mindful of your own needs, preferences, and goals.
Use Asynchronous Communication
It also means reaching out to your friends, family, mentors, or peers for emotional, social, or professional support, and sharing your experiences, challenges, and achievements with them. Working in a different time zone can be a rewarding and exciting experience, but it can also pose some challenges for your work-life balance. How can you manage your schedule, your communication, your productivity, and your well-being when you are working across multiple time zones? Here are some strategies to help you achieve a healthy work-life balance when working abroad. Early on in your trip, find the cafe near your hotel/apartment/co-living space with stellar coffee, espresso or tea. We’d suggest finding a lively coworking space where you can be surrounded by fellow energetic remote workers and digital nomads.
Effective Remote Communication in 2024: Tips, Methods and Tools
That said, it’s the most important factor in resetting your body clock. Go for a stroll, grab an acai bowl and eat it outside, or simply sit in the sun and flip through an interesting book or zine. One key challenge that should not be overlooked, is that of time zones. When there are team members from around the world, there doesn’t have to be a strict 9 to 5 schedule. For workers this looks like having time to take care of loved ones or living and working in different time zones taking time for personal errands. If Slack seems awfully quiet, it might be because your colleagues in another country are celebrating a holiday.
Each of those live in Async—an in-house tool that gives everyone a set place to write anything they need to share with the entire team and forces us to “work in public.” David Fullerton had to overcome the communication hurdle when he was growing the Stack Exchange team. “When there were 4 people, everyone knew everything. When there are 75 people, that no longer scales,” he says. “When you only work in a single time zone, that limits your potential employees to people who also live in that region (or are willing to work during those hours, if they live elsewhere),” Erhard said. It’s not only employees who can potentially benefit from working across time zones—this arrangement also allows distributed groups to be more responsive and available when customers need help. I was the only team member working from really far-away places as I traveled, so a few months into the agreement, I offered to use my time zone location to the company’s benefit.
“That, as well as everyone setting their working hours and turning off notifications outside of those hours, can really help to create and maintain a healthy work environment,” he said. The six hour time difference between the US and Canada’s Eastern Standard Time (EST) can be overwhelming at first, but once you get used to it, it becomes a great advantage. If you are working with someone in the US, you will have the benefit of getting a head start on your day.
Google Calendar looks basic at first glance, but it’s packed with features that make it great for remote teams—or really any team. You can set your own time zone, and save the time zones you work with most to have an easy way to switch between them. But even still, if you want to make a distributed team work, you need to accept a time shift. “I’ll take phone calls late in the evening from folks that don’t realize I’m on the east coast and consider that part of the job for someone working remotely in a different time zone,” Furbish says.
- “For us to speak at the same time, someone would have to be miserable.”
- If you are headed towards the popular remote work destination of Southeast Asia, digital nomad hub cities there, like Bangkok, are six hours ahead of GMT (London).
- But, how do you push a project forward when your direct manager is in Australia and you live in the United States?
- Whenever possible, it’s important to develop the ability to communicate asynchronously when working remotely.
- When I’m setting up meetings, I make sure to get everyone’s input on timing before moving forward with a meeting time.
As remote work becomes a staple in the global workforce, managers are learning that globally distributed teams can benefit a company’s capacity to tap into the worldwide talent pool. But working remotely in different time zones comes with its own set of challenges. To illustrate how companies can effectively tackle time zone challenges for remote teams, let’s look at a few case studies of organizations that have successfully managed these obstacles. These examples showcase the innovative strategies these companies have used to promote collaboration, improve communication, and sustain productivity despite the hurdles posed by time zone differences. Although time zone challenges can be significant for remote teams, they are manageable. By using the right tools, setting up clear communication protocols, and nurturing a culture that respects each other’s time, remote teams can succeed despite the distance.
Now that we have all these basics covered, we can dive into details about different time zones to help you choose which is best suited for you. We will mostly reference the US, Canada and the UK when talking about time zones around the globe. This is because where you can afford to live might take priority over any time zone preference you might have. You can compare prices with Numbeo to determine your monthly expenses while staying in a foreign country.
The difficulties of managing different time zones, language barriers, and cultural differences can be frustrating. Plus, you need to understand the differences between synchronous and asynchronous communication, and when to use each. This one is worth mentioning, but if you’re a seasoned digital nomad or remote worker, you’re most likely already all over this. If you’re dealing with daytime drowsiness and having a hard time adjusting to new time zones, use the things that work for you at home and apply them in your new location. If you work across time zones, this can result in having more people working throughout the day on different tasks. Projects get constant updates and thus result in more productive teams.
You can make great progress in working on the business, as opposed to being involved in it. The cost of living is another thing to keep in mind for choosing your time zone. Yes, AND…you’d be surprised at the number of people who like to schedule a coaching appointment or a therapy session early in the morning, before going to work or school. Whether it’s via telemedicine, rocking remote research, or launching wellness coaching services, physicians are turning the globe into their offices.
These challenges can disrupt communication, impede collaboration, and lead to misunderstandings among team members. The key is ensuring that your employees are aligned with your company’s values and understand what’s expected of them. It’s essential to clearly outline processes and workflows and have proper communication channels that allow all team members to stay connected. Working remotely means setting your own hours and working from home or another location.
By having clear guidelines on how communication is supposed to look and how workflows are expected to run, work can be done smoothly even if employees live on opposite sides of the world. According to McKinsey, scompanies with a diverse workforce are 35% more likely to outperform competitors. While diverse management teams lead to 19% higher revenue, as reported by BCG.
A broad team that spans multiple time zones also spans a variety of regions that often have distinctive cultures, points out Erhard. “That can be a benefit, broadening the perspectives that influence your decision-making, but it can also lead to misunderstandings and communication difficulties,” he said. “Scheduling meetings and collaboration sessions can be challenging,” Erhard agreed. The managing partner explained that his company’s teams frequently need to collaborate across “adjacent” time zones, as well as internationally with clients in the United States and elsewhere. Rike has found the biggest challenge of team members working from different time zones is getting everyone on a company meeting at the same time. “It usually isn’t necessary, but definitely helps to build morale and keep spirits high when we can put faces to names and not feel so lonely in our remote settings,” Rike said.