How Daylight Saving Time Affects Remote Teams
Short answer: Daylight saving time changes the offset between two cities for a few weeks each year, which means a recurring meeting can quietly slide an hour earlier or later for one side. The fix is to anchor the meeting to a specific city's local time and let the other side absorb the shift.
Most calendar tools store recurring meetings in a single time zone, so a meeting set to 'every Monday at 16:00 London' will move on the New York calendar each time the UK starts or ends British Summer Time. That is intentional, but it surprises people who think of the meeting as 'always the same time' for everyone.
Why offsets move
Daylight saving time shifts a region's clocks forward by one hour in spring and back by one hour in autumn. Not every region observes DST, and those that do do not all switch on the same date. The result is that the offset between two cities is not a fixed number — it varies by a few hours per year depending on which side has switched and which has not.
Where the mismatches happen
- US and EU: The US starts DST two to three weeks before the EU and ends it one week later. The transatlantic offset drops by one hour during each of those gaps.
- US and India: India does not observe DST. The US-to-India offset moves by an hour in March and again in November.
- Australia and the northern hemisphere: Southern-hemisphere DST runs on the opposite calendar, so two transitions per year shift offsets in the opposite direction.
Three practical patterns
- Pick an anchor city. Choose one team's city as the anchor for recurring meetings. Book in that city's local time. Everyone else's calendar shifts around DST, but the meeting itself stays at the same hour for the anchor.
- Re-confirm the week before each switch. Send a calendar update a week before the local DST transition so people know the meeting will look different on their calendar but is still happening at the same anchor-city hour.
- Keep async fallbacks. If a recurring meeting often falls outside working hours during DST gaps, replace it with a written async update for those specific weeks instead of dragging anyone into 06:00 or 22:00 calls.
A note on calendar tools
Google Calendar, Outlook, and Apple Calendar all store recurring meetings in a specific time zone. As long as the meeting was booked in the anchor city's zone, the tool handles DST correctly. Trouble usually starts when someone copies a meeting time as a fixed UTC offset — that breaks the moment either side transitions.
Frequently asked
Why does the offset between two cities change twice a year?
Because each region's DST rules are independent. The US, EU, UK, and most southern-hemisphere countries that observe DST all switch on different dates, and not every region observes DST at all.
Which countries do not observe daylight saving time?
Most of Asia, Africa, and the equatorial regions do not observe DST. India, China, Japan, most of Australia (parts only), Saudi Arabia, and Iceland are common examples. Their offset to other zones swings by an hour twice a year as their counterparts switch.
How do I keep a recurring meeting predictable?
Pick an anchor city and book the meeting in that city's local time. Everyone else's local time will shift around the DST boundary, but the meeting itself stays at the same point in the working day for the anchor city.
What about the EU's plan to abolish DST?
The proposal has been discussed for years but no final binding date is in force across all member states. Until that changes, EU countries continue to follow the existing last-Sunday-of-March / last-Sunday-of-October rules.