Scheduling meetings across time zones
When a team spans several continents, the hardest part of a meeting is often choosing when to hold it. A few habits make it much easier.
Find the overlap first
Write down each person's working hours in their own time zone and look for the window where they all overlap. Between London and New York there are usually four or five shared hours, in the London afternoon and the New York morning. Between Seoul and London there is often only an hour or two, at the end of the Seoul day and the start of the London day. Between Seoul and New York a normal working day does not overlap at all.
When there is no good time
With three continents, someone will usually be early or late. Some ways to handle it:
- Rotate the time. Alternate the meeting between a slot that suits Asia and one that suits the Americas, so the same people are not always on at 22:00.
- Split the meeting. Two shorter regional meetings, with notes shared between them, can work better than one call nobody likes.
- Go asynchronous. Status updates and reviews often work well as written posts or recorded videos that people answer in their own day.
Write times so nobody has to convert
Put the time in each participant's zone in the invitation, for example "Tue 16:00 Seoul / 08:00 London / 03:00 New York". Calendar invitations convert automatically, but chat messages and emails do not, and a time without a zone is an invitation to mistakes.
Check the date around clock changes
A recurring meeting fixed in one time zone moves for everyone else when clocks change. In late March and late October, when Europe and North America change on different weekends, check that the meeting still lands where you expect. Our daylight saving guide lists the dates.
Use a planner
The Everywhen meeting planner shows each city's day side by side in local time, marks daylight hours, lets you set each person's working hours, and highlights where they all overlap. Pick a time and copy a link or add it to your calendar; daylight saving time is applied for the date you choose.
More guides: Daylight saving time, explained · How to work out a time difference · Reading the day and night map