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3 Tips for Working in a Different Time Zone Than Your Co-Workers

Remote work became the theme of 2020, but it’s not a fleeting idea. According to one survey, 74% of workers expect remote work to transition from a contingency plan to a standard form of practice.

As people find more opportunities for remote work, they will continue to spread out between timezones. And those changes can present opportunities as well as challenges.

Are you joining an organization that operates across timezones? Here are three tips for maintaining those relationships.

Be Mindful with Meeting Times

Working between Central and Eastern time can be done with a bit of consideration and extra effort. But the difference between Eastern and Pacific? It’s a different story.

Do your best to keep meetings within normal working hours. When that’s not possible, make sure you don’t consistently burden one party with the unsocial hour. For example, if you work on EST and you have a colleague in Australia, you can take turns with anti-social meeting hours so that one party doesn’t consistently find themselves online at 8 PM or 6 AM.

Use Calendars to Set and Share Schedules

Encouraging calendar sharing is the simplest way to set deadlines, schedule meetings, and manage expectations.

For example, if you want to schedule a Zoom call, you can send out an invitation and hope it works for everyone. However, when you share calendars, you can go into the organization calendar and look for a time when you’re free.

You may also find it helpful for people to schedule out-of-office events, deep work hours, or hours generally out-of-bounds for video or phone calls. Then, you’ll schedule mutually agreeable meetings and avoid rescheduling.

Keep Cultural Norms in Mind

American work culture insists that 7:30 AM meetings are part of life. In Britain, setting a 7:30 AM meeting makes you a tyrant.

Cultural norms impact working hours and days as well as pace, workflows, and collaboration. Being understanding of how others use their work time will go a long way in ironing out issues before they become contentious.

 

Are you looking for your next role and hoping to land a remote option? Visit RightStone’s job board to find a new opportunity to work with coworkers across the United States and beyond.


Spring is a Time for New Beginnings: Should a New Job Be One of Them?

Leaving the cold, dark days of winter behind always brings a sense of renewal. For some people, things start to feel easier, and some of the past stress falls away. Your job feels easier, your tasks less stifling.

But sometimes, spring can be a chance to try something new. A new job can set you up for an excellent spring, summer, and even career.

Is it time to be looking for a new job? Here are a few signs that it’s time to move on.

1. You’re Unmotivated Even in the Sun

For many people, cold dark winters can zap the productivity right out of us, even if you aren’t engaged with your job. Often, the good weather can make even bleak days feel brand new.

But if your Sunday Scaries persist even into April, May, and June, the issue may not be the weather. It may be your job.

Rather than waiting for something to change, it may be time to create that change for yourself.

2. You’re Browsing Job Boards

Do you find yourself on LinkedIn or other job boards just to see what else is out there?

If you are looking at new posts and thinking seriously about applying, then there’s likely something amiss in your current job. Subconsciously, you may not feel challenged or believe you’ll get the growth opportunities you want. Or you could be looking for a different culture or benefits.

No matter what’s on your mind, if you read job advertisements with interest, it may be time to start making a move for a new role.

3. You’re Struggling to Recover Each Week

Do you start every Monday feeling even more tired than you did on Friday? Are you struggling to make the most of your time off? It may be time for a new job.

The ability to rest, refresh, and recover from a workweek is a core part of staying engaged in your current role. If the job or the culture won’t allow you to take a beat and breathe, then it may be better to get out before you burn out.

 

Do you recognize some of the feelings described in this post? RightStone can help. Get in touch to learn how the RightStone 360 process perfectly matches consultants with employers.


Creating a Culture of Development: 3 Ways to Teach New Skills to Current Employees

These days, it’s very easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day work of reacting to new challenges and just trying to stay afloat. But one of the ways companies can keep themselves in operation and spend less time reacting to changes is by preparing employees in advance.

A culture of development gives workers room to upskill, future-proofing their jobs and preparing for new eventualities. It also keeps employees engaged, which is vital in a world where 7 out of 10 U.S. workers don’t feel connected to their job.

How do you create a culture where development opportunities are not only available but taken? Use these three tips to get started.

Emphasize and Facilitate New Connections First

Conferences, classes, and workshops work wonders for development. However, by focusing only on those resources, you miss out on very real development opportunities. These are the opportunities that come through making new connections.

Mentorship has a huge impact on an individual’s career, and it offers insights you won’t find in a webinar. Yet, mentorship programs are often optional.

If you want to create a meaningful development culture, you may be better placing mentorship above other learning opportunities and allowing employees to ‘opt out’ of mentorship rather than encouraging them to ‘opt-in.’

Even better, nine in 10 workers who participate in career mentorship programs are happier with their jobs. Happy workers want to stay, learn, and grow.

Set Every Employee up with a Development Plan

Before expecting employees to find ways to upskill, you need to provide them with ideas, resources, and a plan of action.

Employee development plans provide the groundwork needed to pursue educational opportunities. They consider personal, professional, and organizational goals and identify the resources needed to get there. Even better, they provide an action plan that everyone agrees on, giving workers a chance to get started as soon as they’re ready.

Provide Adequate Funding for Development

Before you go to workers and ask them to do more, ask yourself this: what is your budget for professional development?

According to one report, there’s a real disconnect between what employers think they offer and what employees get.

So go back to the drawing board and ask: are you granting enough money for development?

Upskilling Workers Benefits Everyone

A culture of development benefits workers, teams, and the whole organization. However, it requires more than handing out passes to conferences. You need to start with a solid foundation to show employees what’s possible and how to get there. And then, you need to provide the resources they need to make it happen.

 

Would you like to learn more about building a development culture and what it means to staff it? Get in touch to learn how RightStone pairs consultants and clients to build relationships and broaden teams.


3 Reasons to Hire a Contract Worker to Join Your IT Team

The way we work requires agility, particularly in the world of  IT. If your response doesn’t match the market reality, you put your whole organization at risk.

IT agility is your IT system’s ability to respond to external changes, and part of your agility comes from your people. That’s what IT contractors continue to be an increasingly popular choice for businesses.

Here are three reasons why hiring a contract worker is the right move for your IT team.

You Need Specialist Skills for a One-Off Project

You already have a few IT generalists and maybe even a security specialist. But your existing team may not have the skills and tools needed to complete a vital project.

If you need help with rolling out a cloud computing campaign, setting up an ERP, application development, or data center management, a contractor might be the best option. These projects usually occur over a set timeframe, which means you can hire a contractor for the project’s duration without worrying about finding work for them when you’re done.

You Need to Hire Quickly

Do you need to roll a project out in the next few weeks or months? Have you been given a hard ‘go live’ date by company leadership?

Hiring a full-time employee takes weeks or even months, depending on the skills you need. Contractors take less time to bring on board because they are a once-off investment. Plus, many of today’s top IT talent prefer to work as contractors, so you aren’t limited to candidates currently looking for a new job or getting ready to leave their current post.

The hiring process is more nimble, which means you can complete your projects on time.

You Need an Extra Set of Hands without the Expense

Hiring a new employee costs more than a salary: they have benefits, spend weeks going through onboarding, and can come with huge hiring expenses.

A contractor comes with a fixed fee, no need to pay benefits, and strict end date. So you can remain in control of your human capital costs.

Hiring a contractor makes sense for many companies, particularly when you have project-based work and a strict deadline. But just because you choose the contractor route doesn’t mean you can’t afford to find the right candidate.

 

Are you looking for an IT contractor? At RightStone, we place the right IT consultants with the right clients using our RightStone 360 process. Get in touch to learn more about how we match technical requirements and personalities.