Please note that you have to consider the time a meeting is starting and the time the meeting will likely end. You will show a sign of great respect by knowing their local time in advance and setting up meetings at reasonable times for all participants.Īs a global executive, make sure always to ask people’s UTC offset so that you can coordinate the best time for meetings and virtual reunions. Another important point is that UTC does not observe Daylight Saving Time to maintain a consistent time system, unlike GMT.Įvery global leader must be conscious of people’s time and location.

The main reason UTC is considered more accurate is that it uses the rotation of Earth and atomic clocks for measurements. Although many places still use the GMT time zone, the latest official standard is now the UTC. So you would often hear “ahead of GMT” or “behind GMT.” GMT was quickly adopted by transportation organizations, like the Railway Clearing House, in 1847.įormal coordination of time around the world began in 1960, and the newest UTC standard was implemented and adopted in 1972. Most time zones were later based on the GMT, and they would be expressed as an offset, in the number of hours, to that meridian. A convention was adopted in 1884, to use the Greenwich Meridian as the longitude zero-degree. It all “started” as the United Kingdom developed into an advanced maritime nation a system to help mariners keep track of time became necessary. With globalization, a time standard has become necessary to coordinate transportation, military operations, and communication, in general, including internet protocols and computer clocks. This means that 5 PM in NY is 2 AM the next day in Abu Dhabi. If you are in NY, for example, UTC-5, and want to know what time it is in Abu Dhabi, which is UTC+4, you will have 9 hours of difference. On the other hand, if you have UTC+3, this means local time at UTC+3 would be 3 PM. If in the location of the Universal Time it is noon, then it means local time at UTC-3 is 9 AM.

Regardless of whether you are tracking your team’s time using GMT or UTC, how both works are pretty much the same.įor example, UTC-3 means 3 hours must be subtracted from the Universal Time to give the local time. UTC does not account for daylight saving, while GMT does. It sounds complicated, but basically, what this means is that you could have a place within a certain time zone, but their UTC might be different from that. In comparison, UTC divides the world by time standards. Time zones around the world are expressed using something called “offset.” Both Positive and Negative offsets from a central time will help individuals know how many hours must be either added or subtracted from that time.

Gmt time zones