Scheduling across time zones
On a team spread across time zones, meetings and deadlines can go wrong, and handling the zones takes care: knowing which area an abbreviation covers, converting times with a tool, allowing for daylight saving in a recurring meeting, keeping the zones in view and naming the zone of every deadline. The zones also decide when a colleague can reply, and meeting a deadline across them can take work outside office hours.
Zone abbreviations and converters
Time zones are still a barrier on global projects, and one writer who constantly deals with transatlantic teleconferences at work needs the right tools to operate fully in virtual meetings.
The first thing to know about a time zone abbreviation is what it stands for and which geographic area it covers. GMT and UTC are common enough, but GALT, IRKST and YEKST are less familiar, and there are two different Eastern Standard Times, one for the US and Canada and one for Australia. An extensive list of time zone abbreviations and what they stand for is at timeanddate.com.
A time zone converter comes in handy for a writer who cannot do quick time arithmetic in their head, and a suitable one converts times on past and future dates as well as the present and takes daylight saving time into account. In 2013, the converter at timeanddate.com met all these requirements.
Daylight saving and meeting planning
A teleconference agreed at the end of a meeting for the same time next week or next month may not be at the same time for everyone, because daylight saving makes the differences between time zones vary through the year. In 2013, for example, the US switched to daylight saving on 10 March and Europe three weeks later on 31 March, while in New Zealand daylight saving ended on 7 April. So the period from March to April is usually full of timing pitfalls, and the same problems can arise in autumn at the end or start of daylight saving, depending on the hemisphere.
The meeting planner at timeanddate.com can sort out meeting times without daylight-saving glitches, and it helps a writer plan teleconferences ahead and be confident of the times and availability on the day. Its colour-coding shows when each attendee is working, awake but not working, or asleep. For a 30-minute teleconference planned on 12 March 2013 across five time zones, it left a two-hour window, from 16:00 to 18:00 in the organiser's zone, in which to invite colleagues without disrupting their sleep. In 2013, the meeting planner was also available as a smartphone app.
World clocks and the limits of time tools
A writer who deals with the same time zones all the time may want those zones' times ready on the desktop. Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 offer a world clock gadget, reached by right-clicking the desktop. One writer keeps clocks on the desktop for the US time zones of colleagues on a project.
Many time tools are available on the web, but glitches can happen, and as of 2013 even a daylight-saving bug in the iPhone recurred year after year. Many of these tools therefore come with disclaimers, and one writer holds that analogue clocks should not be thrown away just yet.
Deadlines across zones
Timelines and deadlines can become difficult when working across time zones. To remove any confusion, a deadline should state clearly which time zone it refers to, such as time in London or time in Sydney. It also helps to refer to time zones consistently, for example by using either the writer's own time zone or the colleague's in all communications.
Replies and working hours across zones
The time zone a colleague works in is important to consider: for one writer in Australia, an email sent at 9am Australian time is not answered from the UK until about 5pm, when staff there start arriving at the office. That writer does not encourage working around the clock, but holds that a project with an urgent deadline sometimes requires longer working hours. For example, working a couple of hours later so that a co-worker has the paper first thing in the morning is better than wasting a whole day by logging off at 5pm. Meeting a deadline may also sometimes take work on a Saturday, while it is still Friday for the rest of the team.
Being open and flexible about working outside typical office hours can benefit the business. That writer tries to respond to emails as often as possible, even outside typical working hours. Someone on the team may sometimes need a quick response for the client, and a quick email back, even at 10pm, can be really helpful. Where responding outside normal working hours is difficult, an automatic out-of-office reply, set for when the writer logs off for the day, is worth considering to help remind colleagues of the difference in time zone.