Do you only communicate over phone? How about communicating over email or chat?

If you're junior you should request a position with no foreign coworkers, you need to learn as much as you can and the cultural barrier is not easy to overcome if you're not experienced

@RobertoTorres thats my general feeling, just not sure how to approach it

What steps have you taken to make it clear to the person so far? I mean, chances are they know overseas people (in this case, you're the overseas person to them) have a hard time understanding them.

Did you go to college? A number of my courses were frequently taught by the non-native english speaking TAs instead of the professors. I know that is very common among most colleges, so I would be surprised that you wouldn't have experienced this several times. The first couple weeks can be brutal but at some point you start understanding their accent as well as any other person.

@RobertoTorres how did you figure that? Seems like a terrible advice.

@SolarMike - no.

How are you communicating now, and have you eliminated technical issues like bad microphones?

Working for a multinational, voice is horrible. Plus multiple timezones often mean that someone has always woken up for a meeting. Better to work with a chat tool like Slack. Written words have no accents.

Can you be sent out to be with them for a longer period so you get to know them better and how they speak?

I was expecting the "overseas" to be a Europe vs Americas thing (which can be much more subtle, but hard in that capacity as well). That's not the only explanation of "overseas", but from Europe to India, you only come across the Black and Caspian Seas, both of which are easy to go around, so basically UK to India is about as "overseas" as UK to mainland Europe.

@Jasper: everything except Ireland is overseas from the UK! I don't think the sea is the issue in this question though.

@Jasper In the UK (i.e. in English), "overseas" basically just means "abroad", because (with the exception noted by Paul) that's practically always an effective synonym. It's basically the way we say "foreign". Overseas offshoots of English likely do things differently. And the irony of cultural linguistic differences showing themselves up in the comments on this question should not be lost on any of us!! (FWIW, for "over the Atlantic to the USA" we say "across the pond")

Possible duplicate of How can I better understand manager or clients with strong accents?

I had a similar issue at my current job. I was interviewed by the hiring manager and two of my future co-workers, and I literally could not understand 85% of what one of them said, and I struggled with about 25% of what the manager said. Eventually I got used to it and can now understand Indian accents with the best of them.

@Criggie "Written words have no accents." That's not quite true. Foreigners can still have different word choice and grammar, and spelling errors.