How do you manage remote teams with different time zones?

by r_pg101. Posted on Sep 10, 2020    1    7

Since lockdown, we've moved to remote working. Despite being a bit skeptical in the beginning, I should admit that I'm sold to it, so far.

But the team is growing and almost everyone is located in a different place, from the US to Europe. Does anyone have good insights on best practices when managing a team working in different time zones?

Comments

Booysenberry 1

Where did you find your remote team members? And what was the hiring experience like?

CompleteSpend 1
  1. Allow them to be working on their own time zone. I have seen some organizations in my field make their employees work on one time zone across the US and it fires back poorly.

  2. Depending on your services, have them work with the consumers in their time zone as a primary contact with the flexibility to be support of those in different time zones. (Note: if anyone helps someone outside of their own zone, they must make a ticket for that team to review the following day).

  3. If it is possible to find a short time, at least weekly, for the US team to connect with the US team and for the EU team to connect with the EU team (across time zones) then a monthly time for the leadership to connect, it’ll fix a lot of headaches.

    I hope some of this helps!
startupstage 3

Tips:

1/ Strict working time with slight deviation.
2/ A project management software with tasks where you log tasks. Each team member can see what other did, do and will do.
3/ Organize meetings when the working times match.
4/ Hire a person whose working times overlaps with two or more timezones in order to ease the communication and syncing the tasks. Ideally that person must be between the two timezones.
5/ Hire a person who work night shifts.

  r_pg101 1

Thanks for the feedback :) It got me curious, have you seen/tried hiring people who work night shifts in software startups?

startupstage 2

No, I don’t have experience with hiring developers who work night shifts but my guess is that they will be more expensive. But still you can give it a try.

ChiefBroady 3

Since my team is working like that: keep your calendars up to date, make sure everybody has their systems set to the correct local time and then only plan meetings in the times that overlap where everybody is working. And the team members should allocate time for the team within that timeframe. Outside they can work on whatever doesn’t require interacting with the other team members.

  r_pg101 2

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Actually we're doing some of these practices already, I'm glad we're on the right track :)

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