As a remote team lead or manager, you’re probably juggling team meetings across time zones like a master circus performer.
However, let’s face it — even the most seasoned managers can get a bit frazzled trying to coordinate schedules when their team members are scattered across different corners of the world.
How do you ensure a smooth operation when managing a team across different regions?
This blog highlights the top 10 tools for managing remote teams in different time zones.
These tools help you manage projects and goals, track time, and increase productivity.
But first, let’s explore the challenges of managing remote teams.
What are the challenges of managing teams in different time zones?
The following are some of the challenges you can face when managing remote teams:
- Lack of collaboration: Coordinating conference calls or video chats gets challenging when everyone is in a different time zone. Thus, it affects the productivity of team members.
- Managing deadlines: Ensuring everyone’s on the same page while managing deadlines gets difficult while your team works in different time zones.
- Confusing calendar syncing: Managing remote team members in different time zones becomes challenging, especially when schedules don’t sync correctly. For this, you must ensure you use the right tools.
- Issue of culture: Teams working in various zones often come with different cultures, expectations, and norms. A lack of awareness and respect for everyone’s culture can create challenges in managing the team.
- Limited real-time communication: Synchronous communication becomes challenging when team members operate across different time zones.
These challenges might appear daunting.
But fret not.
Selecting the appropriate tool can help you overcome each of these challenges.
What top 10 tools assist in managing your teams across different time zones?
There are many available tools to address these hurdles. However, the key is to find the one that works the best for your team in different time zones.
Let’s look at the top 10 tools for managing remote teams in different time zones.
1. Talk Magnet
Meet Talk Magnet – your ultimate wizard for managing remote teams in different time zones.
Talk Magnet’s simple and lightweight design makes team collaboration smooth for your remote employees.
Your team members can easily communicate in real time from anywhere in the world.
Its instant messaging interface enables you to boost employee engagement.
And the best part? It’s user-friendly and hassle-free.
Talk Magnet provides you with an enjoyable and swift experience because of its 99.9% uptime.
Whether you manage a small or a large team, installing Talk Magnet is a breeze, and it won’t bog down your smartphone.
Talk Magnet offers a wide range of features.
You can enjoy individual and group chats, audio-video calls, virtual meetings, file sharing, and unlimited chat history.
Talk Magnet is easy to use and has no steep learning curve. Your team won’t need extra hours to understand its usage.
Talk Magnet is one central hub to manage all your communication needs. Talk Magnet allows you to manage projects, track time, and meet deadlines.
It keeps your team connected and productive no matter where they are. It ensures that your team working in different time zones stays on track.
Also, you can get real-time conversation insights and analytics with Talk Magnet.
Your team can find any previous file or conversation through its easy search feature.
Talk Magnet makes internal communication fun. It creates an atmosphere where your team feels like chatting with friends.
Pricing
Talk Magnet starts at USD 5 per user/per month.
2. Scoro
Scoro is a work management app that helps you manage your remote teams scattered in various time zones.
You can boost teamwork by using Scoro to organise meeting schedules for remote teams.
Scoro integrates the tools you need to manage billing, sales, customer care, and employee collaboration tasks.
You can use Scoro for project management, customer relationship management, and time tracking.
Scoro simplifies handling all your business communication in one place and improves cooperation.
Pricing
Scoro comes with two pricing plans.
The Essential Plan price starts at $25 per user/month, and the Pro Plan at $63.
3. Slack
Slack unifies all your business communications and makes your virtual office function smooth.
It offers archiving, real-time chatting, and search history features to your remote teams.
Slack helps you manage your remote team in different time zones. Slack even updates the time zones of its users when they travel.
This helps you keep track of your team members who are travelling in a different time zone.
Slack also lets you create channels and threads. These help your remote teams keep track of conversations, deadlines, and ongoing work that everyone’s doing.
This way, you can ensure that your remote team meet their deadlines.
You can also sync your tools with Slack to help smooth team operations.
Pricing
Slack offers a free trial. Its packages go up to $12.50/month.
4. Trello
Trello is another user-friendly project management tool that uses the Kanban method.
Trello’s Butler feature is a new addition, which makes remote team management easier.
Butler is an automation feature that enables you to automate any task within the Trello platform.
Trello gives your team a complete outlook on all projects, including IT, marketing, and human resources.
Trello makes it simple to work with remote employees across different time zones.
This tool lets you keep track of work progress and assign tasks with defined deadlines.
Pricing
Starts with a free trial and goes up to $17.50 per user /month.
5. Quip
Quip is a real-time content-sharing and editing platform that enables your team to collaborate on open projects.
Quip ensures your teams stay engaged, organised, and productive. This is helpful for businesses spread across different time zones to accomplish the desired goals.
The tool comes with a reliable notification feature, too. Whenever someone’s name gets mentioned in the document, they receive a notification.
Quip also lets users create documents and spreadsheets within the platform.
This ensures that your team, across various time zones, conveniently monitors, manages, and contributes to the work.
Pricing
Quip offers a free trial. Its pricing goes up to $17.50 per user/month if billed annually.
6. Bonusly
When managing a remote team, you’re not just dealing with getting stuff done. You face a bunch of other challenges, too.
Bonusly is another tool that helps you overcome such challenges.
This tool goes beyond tasks and spreadsheets. Bonusly’s all about team happiness and recognition.
It helps keep your team’s morale high and care for employees’ emotional needs.
Bonusly ensure that your team scattered in different time zones stays productive and creative.
It lets you spotlight achievements and applaud employees for their success and completing tasks.
Bonusly offers virtual awards and recognition, letting your team express appreciation for one another from anywhere.
Pricing
Bonusly offers a free trial. The pricing goes up to $4.50 per user/month.
7. Timezone.io
Timezone.io helps you track the timings of local and global team members.
The tool visually represents your team members’ current time zones. It lets you view the local time of your team members’ cities.
This makes coordinating meetings, planning tasks, and ensuring effective communication easier.
Timezone.io prevent scheduling mishaps, ensuring everyone’s on the same page despite the time zone differences.
This lets you understand your team members’ availability and working hours.
You also save time searching online for local times in different cities.
Pricing
Timezone.io starts is free.
8. EngageBay
EngageBay is a customer relationship management and project management platform.
Made specifically for small businesses, EngageBay simplifies monitoring the performance of each team member.
EngageBay keeps track of meetings, tasks, and communication among team members working across different time zones.
You can use EngageBay to automatically generate activities based on your team’s work on the platform.
It also lets you update your employees on the progress of tasks by adding notes to the tasks.
Pricing
EngageBay offers a free trial. The pricing goes up to $79.99 per user /month.
9. Basecamp
Basecamp is a software tool that helps you with project management and team collaboration.
With Basecamp, you can organise conversations and keep your team on the same page throughout the project.
Basecamp helps you manage projects and interact with employees.
Its collaborative features help manage remote teams working in different time zones.
Basecamp encourages asynchronous communication, useful for remote teams in various time zones.
Your team members can leave messages, updates, and comments that others can respond to when they’re online.
You will, however, experience some limitations, such as audio-video calling, time tracking features, and lack of many integrations.
Pricing
Starts with a free trial, and plans go up to $11 monthly.
10. Dropbox
Dropbox is as simple as it sounds. You can click to instantly share any file across the internet by dropping it into Dropbox.
Dropbox is one of the earliest methods for sending large files online.
Using its file storage, sharing, and collaboration features, you can better manage remote teams in different time zones.
Your team can access files from anywhere and whenever using Dropbox.
Dropbox, however, does not offer users the latest search technology.
Also, it lacks metadata search functionality.
Pricing
Starts from $9.99/month to $16.58/month if billed annually.
Ready to overcome time zone challenges to maximise your team’s productivity?
You now know the 10 top tools to help you manage your remote teams in different time zones.
These tools facilitate time zone management by connecting your global team during active hours.
So which one should you choose?
Talk Magnet offers many features and integrations to promote exchanging valuable ideas.
This all-in-one tool improves your remote team’s productivity. Talk Magnet integrates smoothly with all your favourite apps.
Book a demo to see how Talk Magnet works. Or sign up for free now to overcome the challenge of managing your remote team.
