Managing or leading a remote or hybrid team poses unique challenges.
With employees across time zones or work locations, synchronizing communication, schedules, and project tasks is more difficult.
Because of this, many leaders are turning towards a new work style: asynchronous work.
This is a work style where exchanges don’t always happen in real-time and teams aren’t necessarily online simultaneously.
Instead, employees work on their own schedules to complete tasks and projects.
Here, we’ll dive into what asynchronous work is, its benefits, and five strategies to implement it with your team.
What is Asynchronous Work?
Anytime you put off answering an email until the next day or wait for a project update from a colleague in another time zone, you’re working asynchronously.
But until recently, it was still the expectation in most workplaces that employees would be online at the same time and work the same set hours. So, a purposefully asynchronous work schedule is a relatively new working trend.
Switching to an asynchronous work model means employees can set their own hours and not have to wait for others to complete tasks before moving forward. They can choose to work from home, join a coworking space, work late at night, or split up tasks throughout the day. The options are endless.
There are many benefits of this model:
- Personal productivity: Employees can choose when they work and match it to their most productive time of day.
- Hiring advantages: Asynchronous work is ideal for remote and dispersed teams, therefore giving employers a broader pool of talent to draw from.
- Employee autonomy: Autonomy is widely known as an important factor in employee engagement and motivation. This benefits both the individual and the company through increased productivity.
- Task Prioritization: When people have to stick around for a specific set of hours, they tend to waste time with unimportant tasks. Asynchronous work can cut the fluff and let people work on what’s important.
There are also two important misconceptions to clear up. Asynchronous work is not:
- Equivalent to remote work: Just because a team works from home or in different locations doesn’t mean they’re asynchronous. There may still be an expectation to be online at specific hours to communicate in real-time.
- A hall pass to do whatever you want: Many companies can—and should—establish rhythms, norms, and procedures for asynchronous work. Working for an asynchronous team or company doesn’t mean you can neglect your contractual obligations or slack on projects and deadlines.
5 Strategies for Asynchronous Work
The benefits of asynchronous work to employees are clear, and what benefits employees will also benefit employers. Increased autonomy, productivity, and engagement will all increase employee output and support reaching company-wide goals and targets.
Beyond this, asynchronous work benefits managers because they can loosen the reigns on team oversight and shift attention to more important things.
If you’re interested in realizing these benefits through asynchronous work, check out these five strategies to try with your team.
Determine Personal Productivity
One of the main benefits of asynchronous work is it lets employees work when it’s best for them. Night owl? Work the night away. Busy with your children? Get tasks done when it’s convenient.
Choosing their own schedule means employees can maximize personal productivity to be more efficient, creative, and focused.
If your team doesn’t know when their best productivity time is, encourage them to explore a bit. Two helpful frameworks on work and individual productivity are:
- Finding your green, yellow, and red zones in the workday: Essentially, your green zone is your peak productive hours, red is when you have a hard time doing anything, and yellow is everything in between. This strategy helps you identify green zones and protect them in the day to do your most important work.
- Discover your chronotype: Try aligning work with your body’s natural sleep needs and rhythms, according to your chronotype. This is a take on the “night owl” and “morning bird” types we are familiar with, plus a third type that’s neither. Your chronotype is a natural rhythm your body requires to get enough rest and perform at its peak.
Establish Clear Communication Practices
Effective communication is always a top strategy for effective teamwork. But when you’re working asynchronously, it’s essential.
Leaders and managers need to establish clear communication practices with the entire team. Here are some ideas for how to do it:
- Onboarding: Use your onboarding process to let new hires know about your asynchronous team’s values and communication. This sets the standard from the beginning so they have an easier time integrating into the team.
- Co-created standards: There’s always more buy-in when people have say. As much as possible, co-create communication standards with your team. For example, you might establish norms around how often team meetings happen, reasonable time to respond to emails, and what constitutes an “urgent” task or communication.
- Documented processes: Once there’s consensus on communication channels and processes, document them. This makes it easier to hold each other accountable.
Use Effective Tools
There’s an app for just about anything today. The challenge is finding the right tools that help your team do their best work.
Like many things, simple is often better. Try to identify a few effective tools that will help your team communicate and manage projects or tasks. We’ve previously compiled a list of 14 business management tools that you can check out.
Here are some of our favorites:
- Trello: Excellent for project management with a simple visual interface.
- Slack: Easy-to-use communication tool for quick messages.
- Friday: Offers multiple management and communication tools to support asynchronous work.
- Loom: Create quick videos to send to your colleagues instead of waiting to get on a video call.
Maintain Team Boundaries
Asynchronous work cannot be effective without boundaries. Just because people aren’t expected to work 9 to 5 doesn’t mean they’re available at all times.
Two ways to set effective boundaries in this type of work environment:
- Establish personal boundaries: Turn off notifications when you’re done working, keep your calendar up-to-date with availability, and communicate when you’re available to work on something.
- Share team boundaries: This goes back to establishing norms and standards for communication. Bring the team together to discuss boundaries for work and how you can support each other with work-life balance.
Make Space for Connection
One downside of asynchronous work is that there’s less interpersonal connection and fewer opportunities for casual “water cooler” chat. There’s a strong connection between community and mental health, so this may negatively impact some employees.
To mitigate this and build a strong team culture, it’s important to be intentional about making space for connection. A few ideas for how to do this include:
- Periodically bring people together: Book an on-demand meeting room to host quarterly in-person meetings. Or, gather socially to hang out and relax.
- Invest in training and development: Retreats, professional development days, or courses can all be effective to establish team rapport while upskilling your staff.
- Be genuine: Create a company culture of genuine care by taking the time to slow down and connect with each other. Meetings happen less often in an asynchronous work environment, so make the most of them by taking the time to connect on a personal level.
Asynchronous work is the way of the future. It’s a way for employees to gain autonomy and do their best work on their own schedule. Leaders and businesses benefit, too. As employees focus on deep work and aren’t distracted by unimportant tasks, it leads to overall better business outcomes.
If you work remotely but want to have the support and tools offered by a full-service office, we invite you to book a tour of The Post.