With their help, it will be practicable to increase work efficiency, simplify the construction and performing tasks procedures, and receive feedback. The most prevalent are Google Docs, Todoist, Trello instrument or Dropbox Paper, and Sketch, Canva, and Marvel for design collaboration. Eastern Standard Time (EST) covers the states in the eastern part of North America and runs from Maine to Florida, while Central Standard Time (CST) includes Texas up to Montana. Mountain Standard Time (MST) spans Utah’s Rocky Mountains all the way over to Arizona, and Pacific Standard Time (PST) includes California and Nevada to Washington State.

Pro: Freedom of time and place boosts productivity

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. April Hoffbauer, Vice President of People at Maze, a global and fully distributed tech startup, also flags missed messages or crossed wires as a potential problem with working across time zones.

Know your remote team’s working hours

1. At certain times, audio-video communication will be required, e.g. meetings, conferences, and other instances requiring a quick decision.
2. But today, for many fully distributed teams and companies that have employees based in a hodgepodge of places worldwide, working across multiple time zones has become a daily reality.
3. Additionally, during a time when the workforce is prone to burnout, an emphasis should be put on caring about each other’s mental wellbeing.
4. Sometimes, you may need to adjust your schedule to accommodate a meeting or deadline for a colleague in a different time zone.
5. If so, then you know the challenges in staying on the same page that come with working remotely.

Remote work can feel isolating – according to Buffer’s State of Remote Work 2021 report, 16% of remote workers say loneliness is their biggest workplace struggle. Routinely chatting (with the camera on) can help managers maintain awareness of their team’s mental health and workload. For example, if a manager detects an employee’s tone and body language have shifted living and working in different time zones negatively, they can politely and privately ask if the worker is okay and if there’s anything they can do to help.

Bonus tip for leaders: Managing teams in different time zones

If your team works in different time zones, then you will need to communicate asynchronously most of the time. Time zones are geographical locations where people experience similar daylight hours at any given time throughout the year. If you travel the world frequently, knowing which a time zone you’re in relative to GMT is crucial—and it’s also important if you’re working with a distributed team. Knowing the difference between Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time alone isn’t enough anymore.

Be prepared to quickly tasks switching

You’ll need to know which times of the day your colleague in London will be awake, and the times you’re most likely to get support tickets from your Australian customers. 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. We post thoughts and updates about team projects on Slack, regardless of who’s online. Plus, each department has a weekly video call to map out that week’s work, and every Thursday we’ll have an all-hands call in order to get everyone together. That, perhaps, is the greatest reason that it’s tough to add remote work—and especially a time shift—to teams with years of experience working together in an office.

That might mean you can move to a city where it’s easier to start a family, or extend your “vacation” to a few months on the beach each year. You might even find time to visit some of the incredible cities on Nomad List while still contributing your all to your team. “One danger of my job, as a columnist who works in California, is a feeling of disconnection from the mother ship in New York,” writes technology columnist Farhad Manjoo.

This is a key factor that influences the transition to remote working across time zones. There is a false perception that remote workers are lazy, taking every opportunity to slack off because nobody is watching. In fact, remote workers are generally more productive than their in-office counterparts. Finally, you’ll want to adopt the habit of scheduling team meetings at optimal times for everyone. This will ensure all your colleagues can attend and participate in discussions without having to be up early or stay up late. But it doesn’t have to be that way if you organize your team and schedule your projects around the time zones of everyone on it.

If possible, alternate meeting times so that one person or group isn’t always making the sacrifice. After struggling with feelings of not belonging due to her Italian-Chinese heritage, she co-founded Freaking Nomads to offer a space for people seeking their own paths. The optimal interaction model is selected depending on the company’s functions.