How to plan meetings across time zones

Working with people in other countries is normal now. Finding a time that works for everyone still isn't easy. Here's a simple way to do it, based on how we run our own team across Copenhagen, Vienna and New Delhi.

1. Start with working hours, not time zones

Knowing that New Delhi is 4.5 hours ahead of Copenhagen is only half the answer. What matters is when people are actually working. Write down each person's working hours in their own time:

• Copenhagen: 08:00-16:00
• Vienna: 09:00-17:00
• New Delhi: 17:30-01:30

Now line them up in one time zone. The hours where everyone is working are your overlap. In this example it's 13:00-16:00 Copenhagen time - three hours a day.

2. Protect the overlap

If your team only shares a few hours a day, guard them. Put recurring meetings, quick decisions and handovers inside the overlap, and keep deep work outside it. Don't fill the shared hours with meetings that could be a message.

3. When there is no overlap, share the pain

Sometimes working hours don't overlap at all, for example between Sydney and New York. Then someone has to meet early or late. Pick the edge of the day for both sides - end of the day for one, start of the day for the other - and avoid night slots. If it's a recurring meeting, alternate who gets the inconvenient time.

4. Watch out for daylight saving time

Clocks don't change on the same day everywhere. Europe and the US change on different weekends, many countries don't change at all, and the southern hemisphere changes in the opposite direction. For a few weeks each spring and autumn, the difference between two cities can be an hour off from what you're used to. Always book in a tool that calculates each date separately.

5. Remember the half-hour (and 45-minute) time zones

India is UTC+5:30, Nepal is UTC+5:45 and parts of Australia are UTC+9:30. A meeting “on the hour” for you may start at half past for them. Make sure your tool shows partial hours correctly.

6. Send invites in everyone's time zone

Create the invite in a calendar, not in a chat message. Calendars convert the time for each guest automatically. It also helps to write each person's local time in the description, so nobody has to do the maths.

How ItsNineThere helps

• A team board shows everyone's local time and working hours side by side, and highlights the overlap.
• No overlap today? It jumps to the next shared time.
• One click creates the Google Calendar invite with each person's local time written in.
• Daylight saving, half-hour offsets and shifts past midnight are calculated from the official time zone database.

Make your team board