2 min read
TL;DR: Small scheduling choices — like writing dates unambiguously, including time zones, and building in breaks — go a long way toward making distributed teams feel inclusive.
Time zones are one of the harder parts of software development, but it doesn’t have to be one of the harder (or exclusionary) parts of working as a distributed team. Here are a few practices that I try to adhere to help practice more inclusive scheduling when working remotely:
- When discussing dates, consider writing numeric dates in ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) or other month/day unambiguous formats.
- When referring to a time, always include the timezone.
- Avoid location-specific language like “tomorrow”, “this afternoon”, or “in the spring”.
- Be mindful of holidays, weekends, and working hours, especially across time zones.
- Consider “speedy meetings” (end 5/10 minutes early or start 5/10 minutes late) to allow for time to be human between meetings, and be strict about ending at that earlier time.
- On that note, meetings should start and end on time. If you finish early, consider using the remainder of the time for informal conversations and to connect as humans.
A small nod to inclusively to go a long way to create a sense of belonging and reduce ambiguity, when working with global teams, schedule and communicate with a global (and remote) audience in mind.
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