How to plan a meeting across multiple time zones

Scheduling a meeting across two time zones is a small puzzle. Across four or five it becomes a real problem — one that's worth solving carefully, because every recurring meeting is a recurring tax on someone's evening or morning. This is a six-step playbook that holds up across DST changes, calendar tools and the inevitable team reorgs.

Step 1 — list every attendee and their time zone

Before you pick a slot, write the team down with their cities. Don't assume: a "London" colleague might actually live in Edinburgh (same zone) or Cape Town (very much not). Specifically capture:

• City and country.
• The IANA time zone name (e.g. Europe/Madrid).
• Any known constraints (school pick-ups, prayer times, parental leave hours).

Most teams already have this in a directory or HR system; if not, building it once saves hours forever.

Step 2 — pick the anchor zone

Every recurring meeting has an "anchor zone" — the zone in which the meeting time is fixed. Everyone else's local time will adjust around the anchor through DST. Choose the anchor by these rules, in order:

1. Where is the host? Use the host's zone if there is a clear single host.
2. Where is the smallest team? Anchoring on their zone protects them from drift.
3. Otherwise, default to UTC if the meeting is fully global. Just be aware some attendees will see seasonal one-hour shifts.

Step 3 — find the working-hour overlap

Open a converter (the live UTC Converter works well) and add every attendee's city. Drag the time indicator across the day and look for the slot where the most cities are inside their working hours. Useful thresholds:

• 09:00–17:00 — full working day.
• 08:00–19:00 — "extended" working day. Acceptable for most teams once a week.
• Outside 07:00–21:00 — only acceptable as the rare exception.

Step 4 — rotate inconvenient slots fairly

For meetings that have to span an offset of 12 hours or more, no single slot will be fair to everyone. Rotate the pain. A simple pattern:

1. Quarter 1: meeting in the host's morning. Hard for Asia-Pacific.
2. Quarter 2: meeting in the host's evening. Hard for Europe.
3. Document the rotation publicly so attendees can plan childcare and travel.

Step 5 — send the invite with a real time zone

In Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar and most other tools, you can pick the time zone for the meeting itself, separate from the time zone displayed in the invitee's calendar. Use this. Examples:

• Set the meeting at "Tuesday 09:00, time zone America/New_York".
• Don't write "9 AM ET" in the meeting body. Write "Tuesday 09:00 New York time" and let the calendar do the rest.
• Include both the host's local time and a UTC time in the description for any attendee whose calendar tool is off.

Step 6 — plan for daylight saving

Two or three times a year, your meeting will appear at a different local time for half the team. The IANA database (which calendar tools use) handles this automatically — provided you anchored to a real zone in step 5. To stay ahead of the surprises:

• Note the four DST change weekends in your team's shared calendar: mid-March (US starts), late-March (Europe starts), late-October (Europe ends), early-November (US ends).
• Add early-October (AU starts) and early-April (AU ends) if you have an Australian team.
• Send a short heads-up to the team a week before each change explaining which meetings will move and by how much.

Bonus: write meeting bodies that age well

The meeting time may be perfect, but a poorly-written invite still fails. Three habits that pay off:

1. Include a one-line summary of the goal. "Decide the launch date for X" is better than "Project Sync".
2. Include a single shared agenda link. Reuse it across the recurring meeting; never paste a fresh document into the body each time.
3. Include the dial-in or video link in the calendar event itself, not in a separate Slack message. Half your attendees will be on a phone when they need it.

FAQ

Related guides

• Best time to schedule global meetings
• Daylight saving and meetings
• UTC vs local time explained
• Time zone abbreviations