Time Zone Overlap: A Better Choice for Running Remote Teams Effortlessly

Time zone overlap is when two or more time zones intersect. Regarding remote work, employees from different countries (and hence, different time zones) can collaborate and work together.

For any company with remote employees, especially distributed ones, time zone consideration is vital. This is to ensure that there is seamless communication and collaboration amongst all team members, irrespective of where they’re located. Without taking time zone into consideration, you may conduct meetings that many employees are unable to attend, simply because the timings aren’t suitable. Working asynchronously also becomes as difficult as some employees get to work while others log off. However, considering time zones and choosing an overlap can help you avert these issues and work together effortlessly.

Effective communication and collaboration are key to managing remote employees working across different time zones. For this, you must ask such employees to state their preferred work hours, update their time zones on Slack, and use a shared Google calendar to stay on top of which employee is on leave and for what. Using project management tools like Asana and Basecamp can also help keep things seamless in assigning work and tracking how the tasks are progressing.

The best way of managing meetings across different time zones is by maintaining effective communication and scheduling them during time zone overlaps. For this, your employees must first inform you of their preferred work hours and use a shared Google calendar to stay on top of meeting times and employee leaves. By knowing when your employees are logged in, you can figure out a time slot based on the overlap and schedule meetings at that time to get everyone on board.

In remote work, working across different time zones is a significant advantage. As this usually involves a time zone overlap, you can find suitable time slots to conduct meetings where your remote employees can fully participate. As opposed to this, working with people from opposite time zones would make them unable to attend team syncs or meetings as they would probably be at inactive hours in their time zone.

Some of the most common problems of working with employees across various time zones are the differences between working hours or daytime, calculating timezone differences, scheduling meetings at a suitable time, figuring out common work hours, and offering assistance to teams working across time zones with massive time differences.