Tips for Working Across Time Zones, and How to Schedule Meetings

The short version: default to writing, keep two shared hours a day for live talk, put a time zone on every time you write, and let tools deliver your messages during the other person's working day. Everything else on this page follows from those four habits. The hardest part is not the clock; it is that a question sent at the end of your day waits a full day for an answer unless you write it so it can be answered without you.

The Slack settings we name were checked in the Slack desktop app on 28 September, and the script below was run the same day.

Across time zones, your Slack dot also says less than people think. It turns grey 10 minutes after your last keyboard or mouse input, so a colleague in another zone may see you as away in the middle of your day.

10 habits for teams across time zones

• Default to async. Write a question so it can be answered without a call: the context, what you already tried, and what you need by when. "Can we chat?" costs a day; "Should the export include deleted rows? I lean no because of X. Need an answer by Thursday" does not.
• Agree on overlap hours. Pick one or two hours a day when everyone is online, and keep meetings inside them. How to find that window is in the meeting section below.
• Say the zone every time. "Friday 5 PM CET", not "end of day". "EOD" means three different moments in a team of three.
• Schedule, do not ping at night. Write the message when you think of it, and schedule it to arrive at 9 AM their time. See how to delay and schedule Slack messages.
• Show your working hours. Set them in Slack and in your calendar, so people can see when you will answer without asking.
• Hand off with a note. At the end of your day, write what is done, what is blocked, and what the next person should do first.
• Rotate the bad slot. If one region always takes the 10 PM call, move it around every few weeks.
• Record and summarize meetings for the people who were asleep, and give them a day to comment before decisions are final.
• Write deadlines in UTC, or in a form that each reader sees in their own time.
• Watch daylight saving weeks. Europe and the US change clocks on different dates, so for a few weeks a year the gap moves by an hour.

How to schedule a meeting across time zones

Write down each person's working hours in UTC, pick the hour where the most people are inside their working day, and send the invite from a calendar that shows every guest their own time. If no hour works for everyone, rotate the late slot. Here is a team of four with 9 AM to 6 PM local hours, on Wednesday 4 November 2026:



Person	Local hours	Same hours in UTC
Ana, San Francisco (PST, UTC-8)	9 AM to 6 PM	17:00 to 02:00
Ben, New York (EST, UTC-5)	9 AM to 6 PM	14:00 to 23:00
Chloe, London (GMT, UTC+0)	9 AM to 6 PM	09:00 to 18:00
Dev, Bangalore (IST, UTC+5:30)	9 AM to 6 PM	03:30 to 12:30

At 17:00 UTC three of the four are inside their day. Dev would be at 10:30 PM. No hour covers all four, because San Francisco and Bangalore are 13 and a half hours apart. Then you have three options:

• • Pick the hour that fits most people, and record the meeting for the one who cannot join.
• • Split it. One meeting for the Americas and London, one for London and Bangalore, with London as the link, is usually fairer than rotating one person into the night.
• • Go async. A written update in a Slack thread, answered in each person's morning, often replaces the meeting.

Daylight saving weeks move the gap

Europe and the US change clocks on different dates, so for about three weeks a year the gap between them is one hour shorter. We checked these dates with Python's zoneinfo on October 6, 2026:

Period	New York to London
Until 24 October 2026	5 hours
25 to 31 October 2026	4 hours
1 November 2026 to 13 March 2027	5 hours
14 to 27 March 2027	4 hours
From 28 March 2027	5 hours

India does not use daylight saving, and most of Australia moves its clocks in the opposite season. A recurring meeting set in one person's zone stays fixed for them and moves by an hour for everyone else in those weeks.

Send the invite so everyone sees their own time

Calendar invites store the meeting as an absolute moment, so each guest sees it in their own zone. The mistakes happen in the text around it. Write times with a zone ("5 PM GMT / 9 AM PT"), never "3 o'clock".

• • Google Calendar. In Settings, Time zone, turn on a secondary time zone to see two columns side by side. When you create an event, open the details and click Time zone to set the meeting in another zone, and use Find a time to see guests' free and busy blocks.
• • Outlook. In calendar settings you can show additional time zones next to your own. In a new event, Time zones lets you set a start and end zone, which helps for a meeting booked in the host's city. The Scheduling Assistant shows attendees' free and busy time.
• • Microsoft Teams. Teams meetings live in your Outlook calendar and use its time zone. Use the Scheduling Assistant in the new meeting form to see who is free.
• • Slack. Click a teammate's name to see their local time on their profile, covered in how to see someone's time zone in Slack. Make sure your own zone is right before a trip: how to change time zone in Slack.

Find the best hour with a script

This Python script checks a date and lists the three UTC hours where the most people are inside their working day. It uses only the standard library (Python 3.9 or newer for zoneinfo):

from datetime import date, datetime, timezone
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

TEAM = {
    "Ana (San Francisco)": "America/Los_Angeles",
    "Ben (New York)": "America/New_York",
    "Chloe (London)": "Europe/London",
    "Dev (Bangalore)": "Asia/Kolkata",
}
WORK_START, WORK_END = 9, 18  # local working hours, 9 AM to 6 PM


def best_slots(day):
    rows = []
    for hour in range(24):
        start = datetime(day.year, day.month, day.day, hour, tzinfo=timezone.utc)
        local = {name: start.astimezone(ZoneInfo(tz)) for name, tz in TEAM.items()}
        inside = [n for n, t in local.items() if WORK_START <= t.hour < WORK_END]
        rows.append((len(inside), start, local, inside))
    rows.sort(key=lambda r: (-r[0], r[1]))
    return rows


day = date(2026, 10, 28)
for count, start, local, inside in best_slots(day)[:3]:
    times = ", ".join(f"{n.split()[0]} {t:%H:%M}" for n, t in local.items())
    print(f"{start:%H:%M} UTC  {count}/{len(TEAM)} in hours  {times}")

We ran it on October 6, 2026 with Python 3.14. For Wednesday 28 October it prints:

16:00 UTC  3/4 in hours  Ana 09:00, Ben 12:00, Chloe 16:00, Dev 21:30
17:00 UTC  3/4 in hours  Ana 10:00, Ben 13:00, Chloe 17:00, Dev 22:30
09:00 UTC  2/4 in hours  Ana 02:00, Ben 05:00, Chloe 09:00, Dev 14:30

With the date set to 4 November, the order changes:

17:00 UTC  3/4 in hours  Ana 09:00, Ben 12:00, Chloe 17:00, Dev 22:30
09:00 UTC  2/4 in hours  Ana 01:00, Ben 04:00, Chloe 09:00, Dev 14:30
10:00 UTC  2/4 in hours  Ana 02:00, Ben 05:00, Chloe 10:00, Dev 15:30

16:00 UTC drops out because London's clocks went back on 25 October and the US clocks follow on 1 November, so on 4 November it is 8 AM in San Francisco. Edit TEAM with IANA zone names such as Europe/Berlin or Asia/Tokyo, and change WORK_START and WORK_END to your hours. Our free Slack time zone converter shows the same overlap without code.

Follow-the-sun handoffs



When a team covers most of the 24 hours, work can move with the sun: one region picks up where the last one stopped. It only works with a written handoff, because the person who knows the context is asleep. A handoff note that fits in a Slack thread:

Handoff, Mon 18:00 GMT (Chloe)
Done: migrated 3 of 5 customer exports, logs in #data-ops
Blocked: export 4 fails on a null date, waiting for Ben's answer in the thread above
Next: Dev, please rerun export 5 first, it has no dependency on 4

Three lines are enough. Post it in the same thread or channel every day so people know where to look.

Slack settings that help across time zones

• Time zone. In Preferences, Language & region, set your zone or tick Set time zone automatically. Coworkers see your local time on your profile. See how to change time zone in Slack and how to see someone's time zone in Slack.

• Working hours. In Preferences, Availability, under Working hours, pick when you allow notifications. Outside those hours Slack pauses them. More in Slack Do Not Disturb.

• "After hours" status. On the same page, Automatic statuses can set your status to After hours outside your working hours, so people know a reply may wait.

• Scheduled send. Click the arrow next to Send and pick a time.

• Times that convert. Bots and workflows can post a date token that Slack shows in each reader's zone; our free Slack timestamp generator builds one. To compare a few cities at once, use the Slack time zone converter.

See your team's local times in a terminal

A quick check before you message someone: this Python script prints each teammate's local time and whether they are inside working hours. It uses only the standard library (Python 3.9 or newer):

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

TEAM = {
    "Ana": "America/Los_Angeles",
    "Ben": "America/New_York",
    "Chloe": "Europe/London",
    "Dev": "Asia/Kolkata",
    "Mei": "Asia/Tokyo",
}
WORK = range(9, 18)  # 9 AM to 6 PM local

now = datetime.now(ZoneInfo("UTC"))
for name, tz in TEAM.items():
    local = now.astimezone(ZoneInfo(tz))
    state = "working" if local.hour in WORK and local.weekday() < 5 else "off"
    print(f"{name:<6} {local:%a %H:%M} {local.tzname():<5} {state}")

When we ran it on Monday at 02:03 UTC it printed:

Ana    Sun 19:03 PDT   off
Ben    Sun 22:03 EDT   off
Chloe  Mon 03:03 BST   off
Dev    Mon 07:33 IST   off
Mei    Mon 11:03 JST   working

Only Mei in Tokyo was working. Ben's Sunday evening message would have waited for his Monday anyway. Edit TEAM with IANA zone names and change WORK to your hours.

Common mistakes

• "Let's sync tomorrow." Tomorrow is already today for part of the team. Name the day and zone.

• Deciding in a call nobody else could join. Post the decision and the reason in writing, and leave room for replies.

• Hardcoding one offset in a shared sheet. It is wrong for part of the year once daylight saving time starts. Use the Excel formulas that handle daylight saving time.

• Reading a grey dot as "not working". It means no recent keyboard or mouse input. Check the person's local time first.

• Answering at midnight to look responsive. It teaches others to expect it. Schedule the reply instead.

FAQ

How do I show my working hours in Slack?

Preferences, Availability, Working hours. Add the After hours automatic status so people see when a reply may wait.

What is the best meeting time for the US and Europe?

Usually 11 AM to noon Eastern, which is 4 to 5 PM in London and 8 to 9 AM in San Francisco. In the daylight saving weeks above, London is one hour closer.

What is a good overlap for a remote team?

Two hours a day is enough for most teams. More than that is hard between the US and Asia.

Should I answer messages outside my working hours?

Not by default. Set working hours so notifications pause, and reply in your morning.