Virtual Communication: Obstacles of Virtual Communication

Time Zones

Defining the Problem. It comes as no surprise that there are 24 time zones in the world, however trying to align a common, convenient meeting time between GV team members in different time zones becomes an issue. The greater the distance between time zones and the more team endpoints that must be accounted for on a team compounds the difficulty of finding suitable meeting times.

Reflect and Practice

A meeting is to begin at 8:00 AM mountain standard time (MST). What time would GV team members need to be present in:

a) Sao Paulo, Brazil?
b) Sinagpore?
c) Moscow, Russia?
d) Zurich, Switzerland?

In completing this task you would need to know differences among time zones. For example, who is on daylight savings time, who is not, and who never goes on daylight savings time? It is important to know that as the northern hemisphere goes off of daylight savings time the southern hemisphere goes on. Team members closer to the equator, do not have daylight savings time because the rising and setting of the sun varies little throughout the year. China only has a single time zone for the entire country even though the country spans several time zones. Saskatchewan and Arizona do not go on daylight savings time. Each of these things needs to be considered when planning meetings.

So let's look back to the assignment. For Sao Paulo you would need to add 3 hours and they would meet at 11:00 AM (11:00). Singapore adds 14 hours with a meeting time at 10:00 PM (22:00). Moscow requires a time change of 10 hours ahead making a meeting time of 6:00 PM (18:00). Finally, Zurich is 8 hours ahead for a meeting time of 4:00 PM (16:00). As you can see pairing any one of these will complicate how time is used for establishing meeting times. As an extension you should note that meetings between the western states and Sao Paulo or between Zurich and Moscow are relatively easy to establish common meeting times that are relatively easy for team members in both locations to attend. However, as soon as you add a third party from one of the remaining groups, the convenient meeting times narrow or are eliminated. Someone must meet at a very unusual time.

Reflect: Time zones also become confusing when establishing deadlines. One must learn to think in several time zones at once. You will have noticed that times in the previous paragraph were given in regular time with an AM or PM designating morning or afternoon and in 24-hour time (in parentheses). Time zones allows one to organize when to call, but coordinating across several time zones makes the process more confusing and difficult. The more time zones one must traverse the greater the difficulty.

Overcoming the Obstacle. When teams are small and close to each other with few endpoints, time zones are not problematic. However, if you have a larger team with several endpoints across multiple time zones, then scheduling is a bigger problem. Verify times and dates in the local time of each endpoint. Your team may wish to give times using a 24-hour clock to avoid time confusion. If your team is rather large and it is possible, you may wish to divide your group into sub-teams or partners to complete a specific part or component of the project. If synchronous communication is difficult to organize, the team will need to rely on more asynchronous communication. If teams do need to meet synchronously and one part of the team must meet late at night or early in the morning while the other part meets during a normal meeting time then alternate who meets at the off hours so one part of the team is not always inconvenienced.

It is also good, as part of your team's online presence to have a posted schedule with due dates and deadlines. This provides a quick summary that team members can refer to instead of waiting for a response from a team member. It also is helpful to chart the progress on the project. If members cannot make the meeting you may wish to record the meeting and post online or post the minutes for other team members to review.

It may be to your advantage to set up an app that shows the current times of all endpoints in your team. You may also wish to use websites (i.e. www.timezoneconverter.com) to set times for meetings and interactions.