For many teams, having members working remotely in different time zones can be a challenge, especially for communication and meetings where everyone needs to be present or just for coordinating events. All of the online tools like Zoom, Google Meet, Slack, and Microsoft Teams really help facilitate communication for remote workers and help manage complicated projects more efficiently. However, when the time zone differences become a bit more than a few hours, even remote meetings can be difficult. For many large international companies, this is already builtin, usually through just accepting the inefficiency as a price for access to new markets, lower labor cost, etc. But for small companies and teams, this can be quite the headache and can really impact speed of development or production.
There is a hidden benefit to having team members spread far apart though: The virtual second shift. Imagine the scenario where you have a content writer and an editor. If they are in the same office, working side-by-side, the editor has to wait until the writer completes the new content before they can edit it. The editor is always at least one day behind the writer. But - If the writer lived on the East coast of the US, say Washington DC, and the editor lived in Central Europe, say Amsterdam; that’s a 6 hour difference between Eastern Standard Time (EST) and Central European Time (CET) with the editor being ahead of the writer. The writer can start writing in the morning EST, the editor gets online 6 hours later (morning CET) and they both can have a meeting online where the two times overlap. At the end of the EST day, the writer sends the content to the editor, the editor gets it, and edits it by the end of the day CET and then sends the final back to the writer - who sees it first thing the next morning. This is effectively creating a second shift for the work day and extending the work day from 8 hours to 14 hours. In a lot of companies - that will make a huge difference to their bottom lines!
Good team management, division of work, and expectations, can really ramp up how fast a company (or team) can produce whatever it is that they produce: Writing code and testing, web content and publishing, consulting and customer solutions, concept and design. Imagine how impressed your customers would be if you effortlessly solved their problems overnight?
There are some challenges though and most are related to the team and occasionally, the work not being a good fit for division. Managers and team members with classic work styles may have difficulty adapting to team members far away and unknowingly, set unrealistic expectations. Remote workers can also be distracted by their day and environment (especially if newly moved) and be challenged not just to work, but to work well and be a part of the team. Sometimes the work or project just doesn’t break apart into shifts because of hard time constraints or is easily handed off so that one team can pick up where the other left off..
RPWalter has been helping teams do this for years. We have a lot of experience with remote workers based in Europe who work with companies in the US, seen a lot of challenges, and know what usually works best. We can help you build your team, set expectations, solve problems with long-distance remote work, and help you understand how the transition to a virtual second shift can really turbocharge your teams.