In essence, their work and sleep schedules are operating on two different time zones - one in Central European time zone and another in the Greenwich Mean time zone that they ought to be in, creating an out-of-sync effect. Then they are waking up an hour before sunrise to go to work and conclude their work day at sunset. When people are getting ready to go to bed in London, the Spanish are eating late dinners and sleeping late. A working day for the Spanish is culturally influenced and differs from countries like the United Kingdom. Spain has been suffering from low work productivity and parliament is determined in reversing this trend by changing the time zone. A report found a correlation with the Spanish waking hours and low worker productivity. This issue can be detrimental for company reputations especially if a critical problem arises and demands an urgent resolution from an overseas contractor now in his sleep. Some industry examples include technology companies in California with product designers in China. An objective that could take 10 minutes to accomplish in a domestically located company, could take 24 to 48 hours to complete for companies with international offices. Companies will experience a time gap where they have even less time in their working day to accomplish interdependent tasks. This presents an obstacle for companies with speed and customer service as core values since different time zones cause delays. During the waking hours of one country, another across the globe experiences nighttime. When businesses expand across the globe and change time zones, a large communication gap instills. Currently on the Central European time zone, Spain should geographically be on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) with latitudinally similar countries such as United Kingdom, Morocco, Mali, and Portugal, After a recommendation from Parliamentarians, Spain is working on correcting the time zone issue to help boost worker productivity.īut does all of this time zone jumping really matter? It may not appear to be a big deal but it definitely has an indirect impact from a humanistic standpoint, and more importantly, an international business perspective. Spain is one country that experiences such problems. Different time zones force businesses to factor in time zone conversion when dealing with international business and can negatively impact worker productivity. Setting the same time zone to a partner makes it easier to conduct trading since business hours match. Country time zones have been historically influenced by trading patterns and partners. Eventually the rest of the world began to use this system, shaping the time zones we know today.The effect of time zones has been a little-known but important issue for international business. Other countries created their own standard times and, in the late 1880s, the International Meridian Conference proposed a standardised 24-hour day, starting off at midnight GMT. However, in 1855, the Royal Greenwich Observatory started transmitting time signals and in 1880, the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) became the country’s official standard time. In 1847, British railway companies began to standardize the time they were using by providing their staff with portable chronometers, resulting in what became known as ‘Railway Time’. A better system was required to enable an efficient operation of railways and new telecommunication systems. Since the time calculations were based on the position of the sun, they could vary by four minutes for each degree of longitude. In the nineteenth century, when mechanical clocks began to become popular, time was calculated locally. Time has traditionally been measured according to the position of the sun in the sky, which is different depending on where you are in the world.
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