Distributed teams spend a surprising amount of time working out when to meet. The math is not hard, but it is easy to get wrong, especially twice a year when daylight saving time changes in some countries and not others.
Convert through UTC
Instead of converting from one city to another directly, convert everything to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) first. Each place has an offset from UTC, and UTC itself never changes for daylight saving.
New York (UTC−4 in summer) to UTC
9:00 + 4 hequals13:00 UTC
London (UTC+1 in summer)
13:00 + 1 hequals14:00
Mumbai (UTC+5:30, all year)
13:00 + 5 h 30 mequals18:30
In winter, New York moves to UTC−5 and London to UTC+0, while India keeps the same offset all year. The same 9:00 New York meeting then lands at 14:00 in London but 19:30 in Mumbai.
Daylight saving catches teams out
Countries that use daylight saving change their clocks on different dates. The US and Europe switch a few weeks apart in spring and autumn, so for those weeks the usual gap between New York and London is an hour shorter. Many countries, including India, do not change their clocks at all.
Finding a workable slot
- Lay out everyone's working hours on a shared UTC timeline, and look for overlap.
- If there is no time when everyone is in normal hours, use edge hours: early morning for some, early evening for others.
- Rotate the inconvenient slot, so the same people aren't always taking the late or early call.
- Record meetings and share notes, so not everyone has to attend live.
With New York, London and Mumbai, there is usually no hour when all three are in normal core hours. The best overlap covers two of the three, and the third joins at the edge of their day.
Tip: Always write meeting times with a time zone, or send a calendar invite, which converts automatically. "3pm" on its own in a team chat will be misread by someone.