If your team spans multiple time zones, you already know the pain: someone's always getting the short end of the stick with a 6am or 10pm meeting. Here are five strategies that distributed teams actually use to make cross-timezone scheduling less painful.
Before proposing times, figure out which hours are reasonable for everyone. A team spanning New York (ET), London (GMT), and Singapore (SGT) has a narrow overlap window - roughly 8-10am ET / 1-3pm GMT / 8-10pm SGT. Knowing this upfront prevents wasted back-and-forth.
A tool like willFlock does this automatically - attendees mark availability in their own timezone, and the results show you where everyone overlaps.
If there's no perfect time, rotate who takes the early/late slot. A standing Monday meeting at 8am ET is always 1am Tuesday for your Sydney colleague. Alternating between time-friendly slots each week shows respect for everyone's schedule.
Saying "let's meet at 18:00 UTC" works until daylight saving time shifts and half the team shows up an hour early. IANA timezone names (like "America/New_York" or "Europe/London") automatically account for DST transitions. Any scheduling tool worth using should handle this natively.
Don't ask people to reply-all with their availability. Every email reply spawns a new thread, people forget to CC others, and someone inevitably replies to the wrong version. One shared link where everyone marks their times eliminates all of that.
Once you've found the time, send a calendar invite immediately. Don't let the group decision sit in a scheduling tool or email thread - lock it in. The scheduling tool's job is to find the time, not to be the calendar.
Ready to try it? Create a free willFlock event and share one link with your group. No sign-ups required.