As a company expands its footprint across borders, it gets to take advantage of numerous benefits. However, hiring internationally also comes with its own set of challenges. These can get even more significant as your business expands its team across different time zones. This is where the topic of this article—time zone management—plays a vital role in your firm’s success.

This guide will explore the concept of time zone management: how you and your managers can effectively lead a team across several time zones. We’ll also cover how productivity tools like time trackers can be invaluable in your management efforts.

Why Correct Time Zone Management is Vital in Global Teams

Let’s start exploring our main topic with the basics: why is time zone management important in the first place? The main reason for this lies in communication and collaboration. Without taking your team’s time zones into account when managing their work hours, your staff will have fewer opportunities to collaborate. While this may not be an issue for some companies, the vast majority of teams only stand to benefit from increased collaboration.

Managing your team’s time zones correctly can provide your business with another benefit. By scheduling your team’s work hours strategically, you can enable your business to operate around the clock. This can be especially beneficial for your customer support team, who’ll be able to address more queries, more quickly.

The Role of Time Tracking Tools in Time Zone Management

While you can manage an international team with no tools, it can be quite a tedious task. One of the best tools to help you in this process is high-quality time tracking software—especially one with dedicated shift scheduling functionality. Apps like WebWork can make scheduling your team’s work hours a breeze, no matter how much time zone management you have to deal with.

Time Zone Management Strategies and Tips for International Teams

Having covered the importance of time zone management, let’s explore a few strategies and tips that make the process easier.

Set a Reference Time Zone

Setting a reference time zone is the first and most important step towards effective time zone management in your business. This can be pretty much any timezone you wish. A common one to set is the time zone of your firm’s headquarters. Alternatively, you could choose the time zone of your largest office. Whichever you pick, this will allow your staff to be on the same page at all times. Your employees will be able to avoid misunderstandings and work together more easily.

Eliminate Unnecessary Meetings

While collaboration is an important part of any company’s success, meetings can be quite demanding. They take a lot of time and are quite often unnecessary. However, meetings can be even more challenging for international teams. Depending on how large your company is, some of your staff may need to attend them outside of their typical work hours. As a result, eliminating unnecessary meetings will save your team lots of time and trouble.

Schedule Meetings Mindfully

Continuing on the topic of meetings, when you need to host one, be sure to schedule it mindfully. Make sure to pick a timeframe that’s within the work hours of all attendees to avoid harming your team’s work-life balance. However, if you can’t do this, be sure to rotate meeting times regularly. This will ensure that the same people aren’t inconvenienced consistently. It will spread the negative effects of working outside regular hours and minimize its impact on your team.

Take Advantage of Asynchronous Communication

While meetings are one of the most popular forms of communication, they’re synchronous. In simpler terms, they require all participants to be online at the same time. However, the opposite of this communication type—asynchronous communication—doesn’t have this requirement. A few popular examples of these are emails and chat messages. As you might imagine, these are perfect for international teams spread across several time zones. However, there’s more to asynchronous communication than just emails and chat. Check out our article on asynchronous work to learn more about the topic.

Track Your Staff’s Work and Enhance Accountability

Employee accountability is another important thing to pay attention to when thinking about time zone management. If your business has an international team across different countries, chances are that at least some of your staff are working from home. Because of this, it’s important to ensure that your staff can coordinate their work on their own—even at times when their supervisors aren’t available. This is where accountability plays a vital role, which you can learn more about by checking out our article on employee accountability.

Time Tracking Features to Manage Multiple Time Zones in Your Team

Before closing off this article, let’s explore a few time tracking features that can help you manage multiple time zones more effectively. The ones we’re going to cover are:

• Real-Time Monitoring
• Shift Scheduling Features
• Tracking Functionality
• Detailed Reporting

Real-Time Monitoring

Being able to keep track of your staff’s work processes in real time can be a game-changer for international teams. Time trackers with such functionality will help you make sure that your team are coordinating their work accurately. You’ll also be able to ensure that your staff are not deviating from their set schedules, which can have negative effects for both your business and your employees.

Third-Party Integrations

While integrations are always a useful feature to look for in time trackers, they can be especially important for international teams. For example, if you’re looking to not only manage but also grow a global firm—you’re likely interested in international hiring services. A popular example of this is Deel, which works perfectly with WebWork and makes growing your business simple. Check out How Managing an International Team is Better with WebWork and Deel to learn more.

Shift Scheduling Features

Shift scheduling features, like the one offered by WebWork, will make it vastly easier to manage the work hours of international staff. They’ll help you set the start and end times of your team’s workdays and track attendance across the globe. Scheduling functionality is also helpful in maintaining a healthy work-life balance in your team.

Tracking Functionality

Many of the market’s highest-quality time trackers offer far more monitoring features than just time tracking. For example, WebWork can help you track your team’s work progress with app and website usage, activity level, and attendance tracking. While you won’t use these much for time zone management itself, they can help you in other ways. As an example, you can look for productivity patterns to assign shifts that take advantage of your staff’s peak productivity hours.

Detailed Reporting

A time tracker with lots of detailed reports will help you make better decisions for your business—regardless of what you’re deciding. You’ll be able to take full advantage of data-driven decision-making, which will result in better outcomes for your business.

Concluding Thoughts

Time zone management is something you shouldn’t forget about if you’re trying to grow an international team. It can play an important role in the productivity and performance of your staff. Fortunately, managing multiple time zones can be pretty simple with the right tools. With a high-quality time tracker, like WebWork, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the benefits of global teams—while avoiding the drawbacks.