Explore time zone management tips to stay on track.
In a global economy, businesses must be prepared to navigate the challenges of time zone management to maintain successful collaboration with international clients and offices. When an employee is attending a conference in Japan, they’ll be 14 hours ahead of colleagues in New York, so how can you schedule meetings across time zones considering this type of distance? The key is maintaining communication using virtual tools, time zone planners, and collaborative work platforms. In this guide, we’ll cover the top strategies for ensuring productivity when working across time zones.
Collaborating across time zones is a challenge for several reasons. Scheduling meetings, setting deadlines, and working out project management timelines involves careful consideration.
Coordinating video calls through tools like Teams and Zoom is one of the usual ways to manage remote workers, but when employees are travelling for business, they may be working completely outside of home office hours. Flexibility is required to maintain real-time communication. Time lost waiting for messages and queries can lead to missed deadlines, lost productivity and project delays.
Apart from the physical challenges of jet lag, business travellers can experience mental strain when working in different time zones. They may need to work outside of their usual hours to attend virtual meetings and maintain contact with clients, resulting in a poor work-life balance. Workers can also feel isolated if the time zone difference is prolonged, enhancing the need for inclusive remote scheduling.
There are 24 time zones, starting with the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. This is the world’s standard starting base for calculating the other time zones, making it a popular option for business coordination.
According to analysis of Google Trends, however, Eastern Standard Time (EST) is the most common, particularly in business. It’s observed across multiple countries and stands as a middle ground between Asia and Europe, which is useful when scheduling meetings.
With careful planning, you can communicate and collaborate across time zones with ease. Here are several strategies to employ.
You can’t schedule meetings across time zones if you don’t know where your team is located. A useful tool for locating employees for scheduling purposes is a real-time traveller tracking tool like Booking.com for Business’s Traxo integration, which helps establish everyone’s current time zone.
Once you know where everyone is positioned, you can plan the best time to communicate using overlapping work hours to maximise participation. Travellers should also update their time zones in communication tools like Slack or Teams, while utilising autoresponders for status updates.
Your company may already have a communication policy for remote and hybrid workers. As part of pre-travel planning, establish clear communication expectations including preferred platforms. Different team members might have different channels they prefer, but if one traveller prefers email and another prefers WhatsApp, messages can get lost in translation.
Centralise your communication with an established channel for business travel. For video calls, this may entail tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams, while chat tools like Slack are useful for creating working groups divided by time zone and pinning important information outside of working hours.
In addition to specifying preferred channels, create a list of expectations.
Team members in different time zones should be able to access the documents they need, no matter the time of day.
Asynchronous communication is best practice for working in different time zones. This describes any tools used to exchange information at different times, ranging from email and instant messaging services to project management apps and voice notes. Asynchronous communication is an inclusive way of working that reduces the need for real-time meetings across different time zones. Business travellers can work autonomously, without interruption, in their localised time zone, while still providing updates and receiving answers to queries.
To excel with this type of strategy, businesses should emphasise the need for clarity in messaging, while sticking to preferred communication channels. When setting out deadlines, it’s also important to list them in each relevant time zone to avoid confusion.
Business travellers might spend part of their day in transit or attending client meetings, rather than following a strict eight-hour schedule. For better time zone management, measure productivity on output rather than hours. Time zones naturally present challenges which may require slight adjustments to workflow. Before travel, collaborate on a framework and schedule with clearly defined responsibilities and metrics for success.
Employing the strategies above relies heavily on today’s collaborative tools, including apps for communication, project management, and scheduling.
Stay connected in different time zones using video calls, emails, and chat services.
In addition to communication channels, businesses should also consider scheduling tools. Time zone planners like World Time Buddy and Time and Date are indispensable, calculating live time differences between locations.
When you need to share resources and deliverables across different time zones, project management tools foster collaboration. The best options let you assign tasks and improve productivity.
Whether you’re using Calendly or Outlook, scheduling meetings in different time zones is a challenge. Here are a few tips to make the process more efficient.
Scheduling meetings across time zones is difficult, so it’s also worth considering whether the information could be better conveyed using a video recording, voice note, or shared presentation.
You can manage time zones in Outlook using your account settings. Navigate to the ‘Calendar’ section and adjust or add new time zones under the ‘Time Zones’ drop-down feature. You can also set up alerts to update time zones when travelling.
For meeting scheduling purposes, remember that Outlook Calendar start and end times are saved in UTC by default. When you send meeting requests to someone in a different time zone, it will show up in their respective local time but still be saved in UTC.
Business travel offers plentiful benefits, from building stronger client relationships to broadening your market. At the same time, working in different time zones can also be beneficial. Employees aren’t bound to a single, localised market, when dealing with international clients and settings. To maximise these opportunities, here are a few best practices for working across time zones.
With team members in different time zones, flexibility is best practice. Strive first to find overlap hours, but where these are scarce you may need to set up multiple meeting times.
Fuzzy images and staticky audio wastes time for all parties involved. When remote working during a business trip, it’s essential to use channels that facilitate clear audio and video communications across time zones. Invest in high-quality cameras and microphones for business travellers, and record meetings for those who can’t attend.
Asynchronous communication requires a higher level of detail than direct, real-time chats where you can ask follow-up questions. If you’re leaving a message for a colleague in a different time zone, they won’t be able to answer straight away. Use clear, precise language and attach all necessary supporting documentation to prevent misunderstandings.
Business travellers can stay productive in transit using time-saving Wi-Fi finders, travel management tools, real-time translators and expense trackers. Travel smarter while staying connected using cloud-based apps like Google Workspace and Slack. That way, colleagues can collaborate no matter the location.
Both business travellers and admins can save time collaborating across time zones with SME travel management platforms like Booking.com for Business. You’ll be able to log in to view and amend your business flights and hotel bookings remotely, all while ensuring compliance. And with real-time traveller tracking using the Traxo integration, businesses gain full visibility over their team for better connectedness, from anywhere in the world.
Read our guide to working while travelling for productivity-boosting tips.
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