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This is proven by the fact that an increasing number of businesses are electing to work remotely, with Blueface research estimating that remote work would rival office labour by 2025. Before sending communications, making requests, or setting deadlines, think about your team’s working hours and the time variances. If they don’t get the message or don’t start working on it until the next day, you may need to give off duties a day or two early. So usually, on most teams, there are going to be one or two hours of overlap that you can have and really prioritize that time together. And one suggestion that I’ll make is in that overlap time, try to spend time on video together. Waking up to a silent team chat, phone, or online communication tool, or conversely, in the middle of a hectic workday schedule for employees in other countries, can feel unsettling or overwhelming. But if you’re working on a remote team that’s scattered across the world, it gets trickier to remember what time it is for your colleague in Germany and another in India.

Setting expectations for communication is one of the biggest and most impactful things you can do to reduce frustration for asynchronous communication at every stage of the process. There are many other factors to consider including cultural sensitivity within the team.
Because supervisors cannot see remote workers, they cannot contact them every hour or so for updates. Too much messaging or calling your team members can cause unnecessary stress, inhibit productivity, and eventually lead to a hostile work atmosphere. Managers should instead give working across time zones their workers some leeway when it comes to setting work schedules or deadlines, as long as they deliver high-quality results. Getting used to higher autonomy and asynchronous communication can be a challenge for remote teams because it’s a switch from the standard way of working.

With such a small time zone difference, managers can experiment and work out best practices for managing remote teams without doing much damage to the organization. As therise of remote jobscontinues, businesses of all sizes are feeling the draw of a global virtual workplace. Employing an international team gives you all the productivity of a 24-hour workday, with colleagues able to pass projects in progress to international counterparts as they clock off. With employees working in multiple time zones, it’s crucial to discuss differing schedules openly and regularly.
While creating processes that allow employees to work in different timezones is logistically beneficial, on a deeper level, it also makes it easier for diverse global talent to join your team. Asynchronous communication requires people to write clear, complete, yet concise messages. People should have everything they need to get started on a task or request ASAP. Guidelines for your communication policies and collaboration tools should be clearly outlined and shared during onboarding. Employees can read and refer back to these guidelines so they know what to do and what’s expected of them. Whatever they choose, it’s important to respect everyone’s preferred work hours and do-not-disturb hours — and know when these occur in their time zone.
With such a big gap between certain time zones, remote teams will inevitably experience delayed responses and difficulty scheduling meetings. With technology blooming you have to leverage as many collaboration tools as possible.
Here are a few tools we use to stay connected and some tips on what we’ve learned about operating and having meetings as a distributed organization. Coordinating across time zones might be tough, but it’s worth making the effort not just for work-related conversations but for fun. In any work environment building relationships fosters trust, increases collaboration, and raises productivity—but it’s especially important for remote teams. Social relationships with colleagues not only combats isolation, but it decreases barriers to asking questions, getting help, and taking risks that are crucial to growth. It’s important to create a sense of community and culture beyond borders. Thanks to conference calling and video chat, this can be fostered through social meetings.
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Just like the benefits of remote work, working as part of a globally distributed team can present its own set of challenges as well. Especially when we take into account the time zones of different team members and the inherent distractions of remote work.