Remote work has become popular, but some companies are taking this option further and offering asynchronous work. While remote work provides flexibility around where employees work, asynchronous work offers flexibility in when they work.
Some employees are ditching the mandatory work schedules and synchronous communications for a more flexible option. In an employment landscape where top talent prioritizes flexibility and work-life balance, offering asynchronous work is one way for your organization to stand out and appeal to competitive candidates.
The idea of ditching real-time meetings and messaging can feel intimidating, but it can also offer some unique benefits. Explore the pros and cons of asynchronous work and learn how to leverage it to benefit your team best.
What is asynchronous work?
Asynchronous work refers to working without collaborating or connecting with others in real-time. It’s a work style that offers greater autonomy and flexibility around work hours.
In asynchronous work, employees aren’t expected to stay active on Slack or Microsoft Teams all day during set work hours; instead, they can work independently on their schedule.
This sounds far from the norm, but your employees are already doing plenty of asynchronous work. They’re likely already doing independent tasks and projects each day and engaging in asynchronous communication by emailing back and forth with people across different time zones.
Benefits of asynchronous work
Asynchronous offers a range of benefits for both employees and employers. Here are some critical ways that async work can help your team.
Expanding your available talent pool
While offering remote work alone can remove some of the geographic barriers for your open roles and widen your potential talent pool, offering asynchronous or partially asynchronous work widens them even further.
Synchronous remote work offers geographic flexibility, but time zones can still be an issue.
A candidate on the West Coast may not be interested in starting work at 5 or 6 am to begin their day with the rest of the team. Or your East Coast candidate may want to work only during the evening to stay in sync with a boss in the Pacific time zone.
With asynchronous work, everybody can work at the time that best fits their schedule and time zone, and you can even take advantage of the larger global talent pool with international hires.
Attracting and retaining top talent
In addition to expanding your geographic range, offering asynchronous work can also help you attract and retain top talent. While some consider asynchronous work to be the future of work, it has yet to become as mainstream and widely offered as remote work.
This means that it will still make you stand out among the competition when you’re looking to attract and hire the best talent.
A survey by Future Forum found that 94% of respondents desire flexibility when they work, while 80% want flexibility where they work. This indicates that asynchronous work and its flexibility are more compelling than remote work flexibility alone.
The survey also found that flexibility is second only to compensation in impacting job satisfaction. Job satisfaction plays a huge role in retention, so offering added flexibility or asynchronous work could help combat turnover.
Supporting work-life balance
In Deloitte’s Workplace flexibility survey, 94% of professionals felt they would benefit from flexible work options, particularly in managing stress, improving mental health, and better integrating work and personal life. Asynchronous work is one form of flexibility that can help in these areas.
Offering asynchronous work allows employees to schedule their work around personal and family commitments. Moving to an asynchronous model can significantly help parents or caregivers.
It also allows employees to dedicate time to their hobbies throughout the week. This added flexibility can help prevent burnout and promote better well-being.
Asynchronous work allows workers to choose nonlinear workdays, meaning they break their work into separate blocks rather than the traditional eight-hour workday.
This option offers a greater work-life balance for many people and can be helpful for those with chronic health conditions who may deal with fatigue.
Improved productivity
Every person is different, especially when it comes to productivity and work hours.
Some morning people thrive with an early start time (maybe even earlier than your standard 8 or 9 am morning shift). Others feel most productive and focused at night. Asynchronous work allows each person to work when they are most productive.
Fewer distractions
Async work can also improve productivity by reducing distractions and allowing employees to engage in uninterrupted periods of deep work. Working with others can be great for brainstorming and building a sense of community. However, it can also be very distracting.
In an office, getting off task by talking to a coworker or getting distracted by all the different sounds and activities around you is easy.
Even distributed teams may find the constant notifications from instant messages distracting. Many remote workers worry about showing as inactive on Slack or Teams or taking too long to reply to messages because they feel their boss will take that as a sign that they need to be fixed.
However, what that ends up doing in many cases is causing unnecessary distraction and anxiety that can prevent employees from being able to focus on a task and block out everything else entirely.
With asynchronous work, the expectation of fast replies is largely removed, so employees can confidently go on do not disturb when they need to focus on an important task.
Potential drawbacks of asynchronous work
While asynchronous work can offer many benefits, it also has several potential drawbacks that leaders should be aware of.
Absence of real-time communication
With asynchronous work, employees won’t always be able to get an immediate response or engage in quick, real-time discussions when they have a question or encounter a roadblock during a task.
This can result in project delays or wasted time if employees wait for a response to proceed with a work task.
It’s also important to know that asynchronous work and the lack of real-time communication will only work for some. Some employees crave the social aspect of work or need a manager to guide them through tasks.
Finding a way to offer flexibility while accommodating those needing more support can be tricky for many managers.
A less cohesive team culture
Leaders need to be more intentional about managing asynchronous communication and team building. People can quickly feel disconnected When working in different locations and during different work hours.
Maintaining a solid culture can be tough for remote teams. Meaningful teamwork in a remote environment is also challenging. Many organizations struggle with this. Therefore, reducing synchronous communication can make this struggle even harder.
Lack of oversight
You should trust your team when working in an asynchronous work model because employees will generally have less oversight. A manager won’t always work at the same time as each team member. This can make it more challenging to keep track of their work hours. It also makes it harder to ensure they use their time effectively.
For salaried employees, the hours worked may be a minor concern as long as work is getting done on time. However, time clock fraud is common and can be harder to catch when employees work synchronously.
You’ll want a system to track activity, such as a project management system that tracks what tasks are completed daily and regular check-ins with a manager.
What to consider when implementing an asynchronous work model
Transitioning to an asynchronous work model does require some strategic planning. Here are the top things to consider as you implement asynchronous work.
Fully asynchronous vs. partially asynchronous work models
Asynchronous work doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing thing. Consider whether you want to schedule some synchronous work time or a day for team meetings and regular check-ins.
If you’re using a hybrid model rather than opting for fully remote asynchronous work, having one onsite synchronous day for in-person meetings may make sense. You can then offer the option of asynchronous work on employees’ remote days.
For fully remote teams, managers may want to schedule one recurring synchronous meeting over a video call system like Zoom for status updates.
Managing work assignments asynchronously
Assigning and managing workloads requires more planning in an asynchronous work model. This is because the employee and manager may work at different times.
As a result, a manager won’t always be available to provide additional tasks. This can happen when an employee finishes their work early but still has time left in their workday.
This is a manageable hurdle if you’re organized and use project management apps like Asana or Trello to define tasks and deadlines clearly.
Project management tools simplify asynchronous workflows and communication so your team can stay connected and track projects even while working separately.
Facilitating asynchronous communication
Asynchronous teams need very clear instructions. They also need detailed process documentation. This is because a supervisor or coworker might not be available to answer questions right away.
When assigning a project to an asynchronous team, it’s best to over-communicate. Consider what questions come up and preemptively answer them in your assignment instructions.
One tip for managers is to use tools like Loom to record screen-sharing instructional videos that asynchronous team members can watch independently.
Recorded videos can be very helpful for clear asynchronous communication. For example, a project might need a detailed explanation. Perhaps you want to provide specific feedback. Or maybe a team member needs a tutorial for a task or a new program. In these cases, a video is a great solution.
It can help to have a system on your communication platform that indicates when employees or managers are available to communicate.
Use different statuses on Slack or Teams. These statuses should show when someone is available for messages. They should also show when someone is focusing on a project and won’t reply quickly. They should indicate when someone is away from their computer.
This way, people can still work asynchronously and independently. However, team members will have a general idea of when to expect a response. It’s also important to remember that managers should be more available for synchronous communication than individual contributors, at least when logged in and working.
Maintaining an organizational culture
Building and maintaining your organization’s culture becomes more complicated when synchronous communication only happens sometimes. A lot of the team culture is built in those day-to-day interactions and meetings.
Managers and leaders must be more intentional in encouraging interaction and building culture among asynchronous teams.
Many strategies to keep remote teams connected can be adjusted to work for asynchronous teams. Working autonomously means teams can still interact in Slack or Teams channels and build rapport; it just means that people may only respond at once.
Asynchronous work also doesn’t mean that synchronous communication can never occur. You can still plan optional happy hours or team meetings to allow people to connect periodically.
Individual employees can also sync up to collaborate on a project or co-work if they want that sense of community or workplace socialization.
The day only has 24 hours. Most people don’t like working the graveyard shift. Therefore, asynchronous teams will naturally have some overlap in their schedules. You can use this overlap to foster connections within the team.
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