How to Schedule Meetings Across Multiple Time Zones
Discover actionable strategies and tools for scheduling meetings across three or more global time zones without losing your mind.
The Cross-Continental Scheduling Nightmare
Scheduling a meeting between two people in different time zones is relatively straightforward. But what happens when you need to align schedules across New York, London, Dubai, and Sydney?
Coordinating three or more disparate time zones is a logistical puzzle. If you aren’t careful, you risk scheduling a mandatory call at 3:00 AM for one of your attendees. Here is a step-by-step guide to mastering complex global scheduling.
Step 1: Identify the “Anchor” Time Zone
When scheduling, select one time zone as the anchor or base time. Usually, this is either your own local time or UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
Using UTC as the anchor is a common practice in global organizations because it is neutral and never observes daylight saving time (DST). Everyone can calculate their local time relative to UTC.
Step 2: Determine Working Hour Overlaps
Before sending an invite, you need to visually map out the standard working hours (typically 9 AM to 5 PM) for every participant.
Look for the narrow window where these hours overlap.
- Pro Tip: Use the interactive slider on Quick Time Converter to stack all relevant cities. Scrub through the day to find the highlight where everyone is awake and at their desk.
Step 3: Be Explicit with Time Zone Labels
The number one rule of global scheduling: Never send a time without a time zone label.
Do not say: “Let’s meet at 10 AM on Tuesday.” Say: “Let’s meet at 10:00 AM EST (New York time) on Tuesday.”
Even better, provide the converted times for the key participants: “Let’s meet at 10:00 AM EST / 3:00 PM GMT.”
Step 4: Watch Out for Daylight Saving Time (DST)
A recurring meeting that works perfectly in February might be completely broken in April. This is because different countries observe Daylight Saving Time at different times of the year—and some countries don’t observe it at all.
For example, the gap between New York and London is usually 5 hours, but for a few weeks in March (when the US springs forward before Europe), the gap temporarily shrinks to 4 hours. Always double-check conversions around March/April and October/November.
Step 5: Embrace the “Two Meeting” Strategy
If you are scheduling a company-wide town hall across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, you will quickly realize that there is zero overlap. When Europe and the Americas are working, Asia is asleep.
The solution? The “Two Meeting” strategy. Host the meeting twice: once optimized for the Americas/Europe, and once optimized for Asia/Oceania. It requires more effort from the presenters, but it ensures that all employees receive the information during reasonable hours.