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Working with so many different colleagues in different time zones is challenging. Any advice for making a distributed team more cohesive and collaborative?

Elaine Varelas provides strategies on managing effective team communications with colleagues in different time zones.

Boston.com

January 17, 2024

3 minutes to read

Q. Most of my colleagues work on the west coast. As I’m here in the Boston area, communication can be a challenge. In the mornings, I often feel bad about emailing them questions as I know they aren’t awake yet. I tend to start my day later -around 10 am ET and end my day around 7 pm ET, but it can be challenging when a colleague sets up a meeting for 4 pm PT. I want to be a team player and be responsive. What is the best way to manage team communications and set reasonable expectations when working with colleagues in different time zones?

A. People around the world have been dealing with the challenges of working with colleagues in different time zones for ages, and their experience should be something that you and your colleagues discuss. Define core working hours that are available when everyone on your team could be available for group meetings. Having a shared team calendar can be useful in keeping track of team meetings and your colleagues’ preferred work hours. Use the time that you overlap with your colleagues efficiently. A colleague may set up a 4:00 PM Pacific time meeting, not even thinking about what that means for you, and there’s absolutely no reason to have that meeting at that time.

Many organizations, especially those with support people working in other time zones, have email communication time, phone communication time, group meeting time, recognizing that there are core hours that people are available in different time zones to meet.

Preempt these kinds of conflicts by setting up a team meeting at a key time to discuss best practices in scheduling meetings. Let people know it’s a fifteen-minute meeting. Have a draft of what you believe would be the most effective hours to schedule your group meetings, and potentially have color-coded calendars that allow for specific times in the days to be used that way. Prior to the meeting, send your suggestions out to people, give them a time to respond by, and then alert everyone to the feedback that you’ve received. You may be able to have everyone agree to something in just that 15-minute meeting. You know your organization best. Do you need to clear this with your own manager first? I would think they’d appreciate the effort.

Don’t use your core time zone group meeting time for meetings with people in your own time zone. What you and all your colleagues want to recognize is how to maximize the value of your time. Everyone wants to increase their productivity, and the best way to do that is to figure out what needs to be done at what times of day. Teams should also make use of asynchronous communication tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Trello, etc. so that team members can get updates at their convenience. And always make smart decisions about what can be an email and what needs a meeting.

Within your team, discuss expectations about when to send emails and when to respond to emails. One of the most useful email phrases that I’ve seen says, “Please feel no urgency to respond to this email when I’ve sent it, recognizing that we all work different hours.” When sending an email, you may get a message asking you if you want to “send during working hours,” which gives you the option to schedule an email to send the next morning (or following week) during that colleague’s working hours.

And while you hope that your team doesn’t schedule meetings during your non-working hours, remember that it’s important to be flexible and recognize that there will always be emergencies or other reasons why people will not be able to adhere to this. You and your colleagues will find that having this predetermined guidance on how to best utilize your time makes everyone’s days and evenings more productive and less intrusive on personal time.