Employees see positive benefits of international teams but language barriers remain a concern

A major benefit of virtualising and meeting software is the relative simplicity of organising and collaborating with international teams. Software Advice investigates how factors such as language barriers and time zones affect those working relationships.  

International teams spread across different nations existed long before the Internet. However, what has changed for the better is the immediacy and relative ease of intercommunication across borders. 

Internal collaboration tools like meeting software and video conferencing software mean that unrestricted points of contact are much more within reach for workplace collaboration. Yet, distance, different working schedules, languages, and cultural differences at work all remain concrete realities when working in an international team.

To investigate how these factors influence workplace organisation and what measures can ease collaboration in international teams, Software Advice surveyed 6,490 employees in remote and hybrid companies in 13 countries. For this report, we focused primarily on the 496 UK respondents in the sample. As seen in our first look at remote and hybrid workplace collaboration and productivity, there is a balance to be struck in how much time virtually connected teams spend in meetings and where and when they should be organised.

How does attendance and meeting planning switch up in cases when collaborating teams are geographically far away from each other? We asked the 57% of our sample that work at least once a month with colleagues in other countries to learn more. Throughout the article, we will refer primarily to this subset of respondents unless otherwise stated. 

For our full methodology, scroll to the bottom of the page. 

Most employees in international teams have managers in the same location

Working across national borders and time zones isn’t always the simplest thing to organise. Tools like collaboration software can help bridge some of these distances. However, this kind of collaboration takes careful planning to ensure it helps rather than hinders the organisation as a whole. 

Whilst teams may be spread out across the world, we found that most of those who collaborate with co-workers in other countries have a direct manager in their local area. In total, 92% say their manager resides in the same country they are based in. 

The circumstances glimpsed in the data suggest a positive situation for workers in their local setting. Having a manager on hand in the same country can be useful for local teams for several reasons. 

First of all, in the case of UK employees, it gives staff a point of local contact within the same time zone. We observed in the data that 83% of respondents working with overseas coworkers have a timezone difference of up to eight hours with peers, which may make touchpoints with direct reports more difficult. 

We saw this in practice in our findings in terms of meetings in companies with overseas staff. As the graph above shows, it appears common that some countries' time zones take priority over others. It can be assumed this is likely to be especially true for satellite teams of multinationals with headquarters in other countries. An example of this might be seen with UK employees working for a US company finding they have meetings organised later in the day. Managers should bear this in mind when scheduling meetings and take into account the working hours of each meeting attendee.

Another benefit of having managers based in the same country as their direct reports is that it grants workers a level of familiarity in terms of working styles, workplace standards, and HR norms. This can especially help newer employees adapt to the realities of working with colleagues abroad from a position of familiarity. 

Cultural differences within teams are viewed positively by most employees

Cultural differences are a reality even when staff work together in the same country as each other. When working across national boundaries these kinds of differences are even more likely to arise. 

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reports that UK employees tend to see innovation and creativity as key benefits of cultural diversity. However, the institute also suggests fostering a communicative, patient, and open culture to allow differences to be understood and factored in when managing cultural differences at work. 

Positive benefits were also noted by employees in our survey who worked regularly with colleagues in other countries. 

In this situation, we observed that the vast majority (91%) find that cultural differences amongst staff in the company offer positive learning opportunities. 

It is important, no matter the situation, to be prepared to accommodate national and cultural differences when incorporating a team from another country into a work environment. Being ready for these differences ahead of time can help ensure a better working relationship and ease collaboration overall. Not only that, they also offer staff and companies many possible opportunities for growth.

Enhanced networking and communication skills: the benefits of working with international colleagues

Like anything, working with colleagues in other countries can create opportunities and costs compared to having a team purely based locally. 

Diving a bit deeper into the core benefits and challenges of working with coworkers in other countries, we discovered a number of elements that stood out for our sample. In terms of benefits, there was more evidence of the positive effect of working with team members from different national and cultural backgrounds. 

The most selected advantages coalesce around factors such as a better understanding of other work cultures, opportunities to network, inclusion, and communication. These kinds of transferable abilities can appeal to prospective employees as they provide valuable experience when building career skills.

However, there are also a number of downsides to these kinds of working arrangements, as respondents highlighted.

Despite the opportunities to experience other cultures and nationalities proving positive in various ways to respondents, language barriers were seen as the biggest challenge of working with colleagues in other countries. Additionally, frictions appear in terms of shared business hours and communication styles. Furthermore, almost a third (28%) noted that maintaining project timelines across international teams proves difficult. This highlights the importance of effective project management and forward planning.

These are all factors that managers and businesses need to preempt when preparing to work with teams located in other countries. Despite even the best efforts, these kinds of issues can arise. By planning proactively around them, workers will be able to enjoy the many benefits, such as better communication and opportunities for wider cultural exposure.

Companies are proactive in accommodating language barriers

The question of language barriers is a reality for many working with professionals across international borders. English may be the “lingua franca” of business, and indeed most —if not all— UK-based companies, but speakers with a different mother tongue can still encounter difficulties in a primarily English-speaking workplace. 

Returning to our full sample of 496 hybrid and remote employees, 63% of UK respondents said they work with at least a few colleagues with a different mother tongue than their own. This marked British employees as the least likely to collaborate with speakers of another language among English-speaking peers in our sample such as the USA (66%), Australia (69%), and Canada (70%).

However, despite UK employees working less with co-workers of other languages when compared to the rest of the English-speaking world, there was clear evidence in our sample of a proactive approach to overcoming language barriers in collaborative situations such as meetings. 

Meetings are a particular area where non-native speakers can struggle in the work environment. A lot of information is shared in these settings, often quite fast, and when working with colleagues with different first languages in a remote or hybrid setting, important details can be missed. 

What we saw from our sample was that, in many cases, managers are leaving space for questions and providing follow-up material so everyone can remain up-to-date on what’s happening. This can help non-natives go over the information at their own pace, which can be especially useful if they have a higher comprehension of reading than listening. It was also quite common to see presenters moderating their speech to make it easier for non-natives to understand when in the meeting itself.

These are all positive steps to help non-native speakers follow along with meetings. However, it was notable that all of these options received less than half of all responses. This seems to show that there is still a lot of variation in approaches that companies currently use to help non-natives keep up.

Points of focus when working with different cultures, nationalities, and languages

Working with staff members from many nationalities offers unique opportunities and challenges to both businesses and employees. As we learned in this study, more than half of workers in virtual and remote companies collaborate with international colleagues and many also work with speakers of different languages.

However, despite there being a propensity for internationally distributed colleagues amongst our sample, it was generally common for workers to have a manager available in their country of residence. 

It was also clear that whilst staff appreciate the opportunities presented by working with international coworkers, such as better communication skills and cultural knowledge, some downsides harm these working relationships, especially when language barriers arise.

We also observed a mixed picture regarding language barriers where they were seen as the biggest challenge to respondents, yet it seems companies are proactively working to alleviate these difficulties.