How to Schedule Meetings Across Time Zones Fairly: Rotating the Early and Late Hours

In short: A time-zone converter finds the hours your team overlaps. It doesn't notice that the same person takes the 7 a.m. call every week. Fairhour, our free iPhone app, scores each person's early and late hours with a stated formula, picks the time that is fairest today, and for a meeting that repeats, rotates the slot week by week so the inconvenient hours are shared out, with a running tally of who took which. Everything stays on your iPhone and in your own iCloud.

Key takeaways

• Overlap is not fairness. For teams across three or more time zones there is often no slot inside everyone's working day, and someone always pays.
• Score the cost per person, not just whether a slot fits: an hour just outside someone's day costs less than an hour in their sleep.
• Choose the slot whose worst-off person is least burdened, then the one with the least total burden.
• For a recurring meeting, rotate, and keep a tally, so the same people don't absorb every early and late hour.
• Share times in each person's own zone, written out, so nobody converts in their head.

Why the overlap isn't the answer

For two cities a few hours apart, a converter is enough: London and New York share three working hours most of the year. Add Sydney and the shared window disappears. Any time you pick sits outside someone's working day, and if you pick the same time every week, the same person carries it every week. Over a quarter, that is a dozen early starts or late nights for one teammate and none for the others.

Fairness needs two things a converter doesn't have: a measure of how inconvenient a time is for each person, and a memory of who has already taken the hard slots.

How Fairhour scores a meeting time

Each person has working hours (09:00 to 17:00 by default), working days (Monday to Friday by default, any set allowed), a sleep window (22:00 to 07:00 by default) and optional hard bounds such as "never before 07:00".

Every minute of a meeting is scored for each person, in their own local time:

When the minute falls	Burden per minute
Inside their working hours, on a working day	0
Within 60 minutes of their working hours	1
Within 120 minutes	2
Further outside their working hours	3
Any waking minute on a non-working day	3
Inside their sleep window	4

A meeting's burden for a person is the sum over its minutes divided by 60, in burden hours. A time that breaks anyone's hard bound is never offered. The app shows this formula on its own screen: it is a stated rule, not a measurement and not a judgement of anyone.

Finding the fairest time today

Fairhour tries every quarter-hour of the day and ranks the candidates:

1. The highest burden among the attendees, lowest first. Fairness comes first: nobody should carry a heavy burden if a lighter spread exists.
2. The total burden, lowest first.
3. Then the earliest such time.

Two worked examples:

• London and New York, 14 January. Many slots carry zero burden for both. The best is 14:00 London / 09:00 New York, the earliest of them.
• London, New York and Sydney, 14 January (Sydney on summer time). No slot is free for everyone. The best is 21:00 UTC: 21:00 in London (burden 3.0), 16:00 in New York (0) and 08:00 the next morning in Sydney (1.0). The worst-off person carries 3.0, and no other time does better.

Rotating a recurring meeting

For a meeting that repeats, Fairhour keeps a tally per team: the burden each person has taken in the occurrences that were held. For each upcoming occurrence, it chooses the slot where the highest of (each person's tally plus this occurrence's burden) is lowest, then the lowest total. In practice the inconvenient hours move around the team week by week, and the tally shows anyone who asks that they did.

Everything else Fairhour does

• Everyone's day side by side, as the sky they're under. Dawn, daylight, dusk and night are computed for each city from NOAA's solar equations. Drag across the day to see what time it is for everyone at once.
• Daylight saving handled. Changes in each country are tracked automatically, so a meeting set in January stays right in April.
• Plain-language requests. Type something like "Tuesday afternoon with the Sydney team", and Fairhour interprets it on the device.
• Send the time three ways: as plain text with every zone written out, as a calendar event, or as a link that opens the time in the recipient's own zone, in Fairhour or in any browser.
• In four languages: English, French, German and Italian.

Privacy by design

Fairhour has no account, no server, no analytics and no third-party code. People, teams and meetings stay on your iPhone and sync only through your own private iCloud database. A shared link carries the meeting time in the part of the address that browsers never send to a server, and the time is shown on the viewer's own device. See the privacy policy.

How to plan a fair recurring meeting

1. Add the people or the cities. Each person gets their own working hours, working days and sleep window; set hard bounds for anyone who needs them.
2. Look at the best time today and check the burden it puts on each person.
3. Make it a recurring meeting. Fairhour plans the next occurrences with the rotation and starts the tally.
4. Share each occurrence as a calendar event or a link.
5. Glance at the tally each month. If one person's burden keeps climbing, change the rotation's members or their hours.

Fairhour is free: no purchases, no subscriptions, no ads. It is built and coming to the App Store. See Fairhour.

Frequently asked questions

How do I schedule a meeting across time zones fairly?

Score how inconvenient each candidate time is for each person, pick the time whose worst-off person is least burdened, and for a recurring meeting rotate the slot so the early and late hours are shared. Fairhour does all three.

What is the best time for a meeting between London, New York and Sydney?

There is usually no time inside everyone's working day. On 14 January, with Sydney on summer time, the least unfair single time is 21:00 UTC: late evening in London, mid-afternoon in New York and 8 a.m. the next day in Sydney. For a weekly meeting, rotating it spreads that cost.

Should a recurring meeting always be at the same time?

Not if it falls outside someone's working day. A fixed time means the same people always take the early or late hour. Rotating it, and keeping a tally, shares the cost across the team.

Does Fairhour handle daylight saving time?

Yes. Each country's changes are tracked automatically, and every occurrence is computed in each person's local time on that date.

Is Fairhour free?

Yes: no purchases, no subscriptions and no ads. It needs no account, and your data stays on your iPhone and in your own iCloud.