Working Across Countries When Public Holidays Don't Match

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When your team or clients are in different countries, public holidays rarely line up, so someone is often off while someone else is waiting. The fix is simple but needs to happen early: a shared holiday calendar, a named backup for every person and written handoffs.

Why do international holidays cause so many problems?

Most delays do not come from the holiday itself. They come from surprise. A client in one country expects a reply on a day when your designer in another country is off, and nobody knew. Regional holidays make it harder, because a public holiday may apply to one part of a country and not another.

Remote and coworking teams feel this more than office teams, since people are spread out and cannot see an empty desk.

How do you build a holiday calendar the whole team can use?

1. Ask each person for their country and region, plus any religious or cultural days they observe.
2. Add the public holidays to a shared team calendar. A reference like the timeanddate.com holiday listings helps you see dates by country, but ask each person to confirm theirs.
3. Add booked leave to the same calendar so one view shows who is out.
4. Do the same for key clients and note when their offices close.
5. Review it every quarter, since dates move from year to year.

How do you cover work while someone is away?

Give every person a backup who is working on that day, ideally in a similar time zone. Then agree three things before the holiday starts.

• What counts as urgent: for example, a site outage or a payment failure, but not a routine question.
• How to reach the backup: one channel, one name.
• When the person returns: so nobody expects an answer before then.

Do not expect someone to work on their holiday just because yours is a normal day. Whether it is allowed or paid depends on their contract and local employment rules, so check with whoever handles HR or payroll.

What should a handoff note contain?

A good note lets the backup act without a call. Keep it short and put it where the team already looks, such as the project board.

• Current status of each task and the next step.
• Deadlines, and which ones can slip.
• Links to files and accounts the backup needs.
• Who decides if something changes.

How do you hold meetings when time zones and holidays collide?

Check the holiday calendar before you pick a time, then look for overlapping working hours for the people who are in. A tool such as the timeanddate.com meeting planner shows several cities side by side.

If overlap is thin, rotate the inconvenient slot so the same people do not always take early or late calls. Record the meeting or post written notes, so anyone who is off can catch up in a few minutes. If the meeting is not essential, move it to a day when everyone is in.

How do you tell clients about your own holidays?

Say it early and be specific. Two weeks ahead, email the dates you will be away, who covers, and when you will reply. Then set an automatic out-of-office message with the same details, so nobody has to guess.

• Give a return date, not just "away".
• Name the backup and how to reach them.
• Say what you will not respond to until you are back.

How do you protect time off for yourself?

If you work from home or a shared space, the line between work and rest blurs. Turn off email and chat notifications on your phone, and schedule messages so they go out in the recipient's working hours instead of yours. If you do need to check in, pick a fixed short window and stay inside it.

A reliable setup also helps, because a dropped connection on a deadline day is worse during a holiday. Our guide to fixing Wi-Fi problems when you work remotely covers the basics. If you want small desk upgrades, Mavigadget's Cool Gadgets and Tools collection is one place to browse.

What should the team do after the holidays?

Spend a short session reviewing what happened. Ask what slipped, which handoffs worked and where clients waited longer than they should have. Update the calendar and your urgent-issue list based on the answers.

If your team works from a shared space, a quiet room for the catch-up helps. Our post on using a coworking space for workshops shows how to book and run one. For wider planning across countries, see the multi-country planning guide.