My Friday is your Thursday. Challenges of working globally.

As I sat down this Friday morning, and one of the first emails had the subject of ‘Planning for our call Tomorrow’. My immediate reaction was confusion as I knew the call would be later this afternoon and not Saturday, but I quickly realised that the author was on the other side of the world, and there, it is still Friday.

I’ve worked across timezones for many years and still love how we end saying ‘good-morning, good evening or whatever ’as we join a call. Working internationally, and especially virtually, can be a great way to take projects forward quickly, but it can create its challenges. The key to working across timezones is to be sensitive. Everybody in global roles knows the challenge, and teams need to come  together and agree on how they will work and the boundaries they will follow (maybe no meetings after 4pm on Friday for anybody)

Some remote meetings are for news briefings or to provide updates and may not need to be interactive. These can be recorded and made available to every to listen to at the right time. If done within Microsoft Teams, then question and answer sessions can be held virtually, which has the added value of encouraging participation from those who feel uncomfortable speaking in a large group.

To get India, Europe and US teams together on one call takes some doing, and there are only a few hours in the UK afternoon that work for everybody, so naturally, these get booked quickly. Getting meetings into the diary early is the key to success and good attendance. International date formats can be a source of confusion; consider using longer forms of dates, especially on plans or in critical documents. I spend ages trying to figure out if I’ve missed the event on 3/4/2021 or it is still to come.

Time differences are not the only challenge. Check for local festival and holidays and respect these. When working on essential projects, teams can often become very invested and work through weekends and holiday, but eventually, the team will tire, lose focus, and performance will slip.

In the last year, we’ve all been under pressure, and we’ve all seen changes to how we work. As Leaders, we need to make sure we set the right example and send an important message to everybody that it is OK to have priorities away from the office. Sometimes that is as simple as letting everybody know that you’re logging off early today as you have something important today. I often use a function in Outlook to delay sending emails so that they are delivered in the recipients working day.  Just as my Friday evening is the middle of the morning somewhere else, my Monday morning is Sunday evening for somebody.