To keep your startup running smoothly, a team calendar isn't just helpful, it's essential. A shared calendar is a powerful tool that improves communication, increases efficiency, helps balance workloads, and boosts productivity. For startups facing long and hectic days, a team calendar brings much needed organization and structure.
A well-managed team calendar serves a variety of critical functions, such as:
- Reminding everyone of important deadlines and due dates.
- Scheduling meetings, client calls, one on ones, and work shifts.
- Notifying team members when you are available or busy.
- Mapping out long term projects, like a content marketing schedule.
- Tracking the progress of a project from start to finish.
This is just the beginning. A shared calendar does more than keep your team on the same page. It also creates accountability and helps everyone focus on their most important priorities.
To unlock these advantages, you need to create and manage your team calendar effectively from day one. Here are the best practices to get you started.
1. Choose the Right Cloud-Based Calendar App
Your first step is selecting the right calendar tool for your startup. This choice depends on your specific needs, but at a minimum, your calendar should be user friendly, easily shareable, and fit within your budget.
Here are some of the most popular options to explore:
- Google Calendar: It’s free, straightforward, and ideal for scheduling meetings and reminding your team of key milestones. You can also create custom calendar templates using Google Docs or Sheets.
- Microsoft Outlook Calendar: While slightly more complex, it's a familiar tool for many. It is perfect for generating detailed schedules and agendas, and you can design templates with Excel.
- Apple Calendar: A very intuitive calendar if your team primarily uses Apple products.
Beyond these mainstays, you may want to look into specialized tools. For example, TeamUp and Teamweek are calendars built specifically for team organization. Project management platforms like Trello and Wrike also have strong calendar and organizational features.
Crucially, ensure your chosen online calendar can sync with other tools. A platform like Calendar, for instance, syncs with your existing Google, Outlook, or Apple calendars so you can seamlessly schedule events. It even uses machine learning to offer smart suggestions for your next team meeting.
2. Appoint a Calendar Manager
Once you have chosen your calendar app, assign one person to be in charge of it. This could be you or an administrative assistant. If too many people are adding and editing entries, your calendar will become disorganized and prone to errors. With multiple people making adjustments, it will quickly become cluttered with conflicting entries.
Your team calendar should be collaborative, but that doesn't mean everyone needs full editing permissions. Instead, all changes should be routed through the calendar manager to maintain a clean, organized, and reliable schedule.
3. Customize Your Calendar for Clarity
One of the greatest benefits of online calendars is their customizability. For example, create separate, color coded calendars for different functions: one for project tasks, another for meetings, and a third for employee vacation time. This makes them easy to differentiate at a glance.
Additionally, you can customize how and when your team receives reminders. You could turn off desktop notifications to reduce distractions during deep work, or you could set automated reminders to go out 15 minutes before a meeting begins.
4. Prioritize and Block Non-Negotiable Time
Non-negotiables are the critical events that must happen. This includes project deadlines, key client meetings, or recurring deep work sessions.
Placing these items into your team’s calendar first ensures that less important tasks won't steal valuable time. The sooner you add them, the better. This way, the time is already blocked out when someone tries to schedule another activity.
5. Schedule Around Your Team’s Peak Productivity
We all have natural energy rhythms, and research suggests most of us are most productive before lunch. You can use this insight to your team's advantage.
Schedule your most important tasks when everyone is alert and focused. Protect this high energy time for deep, focused work, rather than filling it with routine meetings. Then, you can plan less critical work for known productivity slumps, like the mid afternoon. Productivity also varies by season, with months like October being highly productive and summer months often being less so.
To identify your team's peak productivity times, have everyone track their time for a week. You can then review the data or use simple polls and surveys to gather this information.
6. Stagger Schedules to Ensure Coverage
While it requires some initial planning, staggering employee schedules allows for more flexibility and ensures you are never understaffed or overstaffed. For example, if your entire team requests the same week off during the summer, you will have no one available to work. A shared calendar allows team members to see when others have planned vacations, encouraging them to select different dates and ensuring you always have coverage.
7. Build in Buffers and White Space
Humans aren't machines; we need breaks to clear our heads and prepare for the next task. To account for this, schedule time buffers and white space directly into your calendar.
For example, avoid scheduling back to back meetings. Leave 30 minutes between events so everyone can process what was discussed, grab a coffee, and prepare for the next meeting. Leaving open blocks of time also gives your schedule flexibility in case of an emergency or unexpected shift in priorities.
8. Encourage Syncing with Personal Calendars
This doesn’t mean forcing your team to share every private detail. Instead, it’s about visibility into availability. When team members sync their personal calendars, everyone can see when they are free or busy. For instance, if a colleague is traveling to a client lunch, the rest of the team will know they are unavailable during that time. This is also useful for planning around vacations or personal appointments.
9. Account for Time Zones and Holidays
As remote work becomes more common, managing time zones is a necessity. A 3 p.m. meeting might be perfect for you, but it could be noon for another team member, forcing them to skip lunch.
Furthermore, if you work with an international team, be aware of national holidays. Always check for regional holidays before setting important deadlines or meetings for international team members.
10. Rethink Your Approach to Meetings
Unnecessary meetings don't just drain productivity; they kill morale. Before adding a meeting to the calendar, confirm that it's truly necessary. If it is, don't accept the default 30 or 60 minute time slot. Instead, change the duration to how much time you actually need, which is often less than 30 minutes.
Also, avoid scheduling meetings at the last minute. This is disrespectful of your team's time and can lead to confusion and poor attendance. If a topic needs immediate attention, consider using email or a messaging tool like Slack until a proper meeting can be scheduled.
11. Review and Adapt Your Team Calendar Regularly
Finally, make a habit of reviewing your team calendar frequently. Projects are completed, schedules change, and new responsibilities emerge. An outdated calendar is an obsolete tool.
For example, team members who are parents may need more schedule flexibility during summer and holiday breaks. By regularly reviewing the calendar, you can adapt to these changing needs and ensure your team's schedule remains a source of clarity, not stress.
By implementing these practices, your team calendar will transform from a simple scheduling tool into a powerful asset for productivity and alignment. For startups looking to unify scheduling, project management, and communication, tools like Novacal provide a centralized platform where your team calendar can integrate seamlessly with your entire workflow, turning strategy into action.