Originally published on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/omitting-time-zones-so-pre-pandemic-harold-mann/
If you're discussing times with colleagues, vendors or customers, include time zones.
Way earlier in the century, around February of 2020, we all used to come into offices, together and use phrases like "where should we go for lunch"
Now millions of us are emerging from the pandemic with a new look on being "at work" - we might be at work from home, or in a business center while on pseudo vacation, or from an AirBnb, or a few days a week in the office.
If you're going to be doing something at 2:30pm, it might be 5:30pm for that colleague that moved home to care for an aging parent. It might be 11:30am for that coworker who is in Hawaii for the week. Rather than keeping track of where everyone is, make your time statements include a time zone. Then they can adjust based on where THEY are. If you don't, you may be presuming too much, and you will eventually, almost-certainly miss someone's availability because of it.
It's usually just adding "PST" or "EST" or "CMT" - do it! Remove ambiguity. Let people work from wherever they are, but don't expect them to know where you'll be at 2:30pm.