Map from the US Central Intelligence Agency via Wikipedia

Loup’s Guide to Respecting Your Colleagues’ Time Zones

Switching to full-time remote work can be a tough transition and many people struggle to set work-life boundaries. For a team to thrive, it’s important to respect each others’ working hours as nothing burns people out faster than frequent calls interrupting family or personal time. Time zone challenges are an ongoing reality, so here are a few best practices:

• Own your calendar. Put calendar blocks in the early morning and late evening (or whenever your blackout times are) so people aren’t tempted to schedule you into calls.
• Record calls. If a contributor in a tough-to-schedule time zone needs to be informed, record the call so they can listen afterwards. This is an incredibly easy way to ensure people don’t feel left out.
• Ask first and be flexible. If you’re scheduling someone into an early morning or late evening call, ask them privately before you send a calendar invite, and be prepared to be flexible. For example, someone might choose a call at 10pm instead of 6pm to avoid missing dinner with their kids.
• Lose the ego. If you are the one making the call impossible to schedule, ask if you really need to be there. Can you delegate to someone else and get a post-call update? Can you step up and volunteer to watch the recording? Is it easier for every single other person if you take the call early in the morning or late in the evening? Don’t be precious if you can help it.
• Watch the power dynamics. Consider who is disadvantaged by scheduling. Recognize that folks in other parts of the world might go to extraordinary lengths to accept a call. For example, on one project we learned that a participant was sleeping in the office to attend a weekly call because they did not have broadband at home and transit options were non-existent outside of their normal working hours.
• Allow fluid, asynchronous work. Many tools exist that allow global team to contribute to projects during their normal working hours (we wrote about this here).

Loup offers custom organizational design and guidance with a specialization in helping geographically distributed teams. Through training, coaching, tooling, and facilitation, we help establish healthy project management processes and practices for teams. Learn more about our services.