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Shared calendars among co-workers and team members have a lot of great advantages. For one thing, they make scheduling meetings easier for all involved. For another they can save a lot of time when setting meetings.
But there are challenges with shared calendars as well. In fact, there are errors that cause shared calendar confusion for all who can access them.
1. Scheduling Last Minute Events
When you schedule last minute events or meetings you may cause shared calendar confusion in the workplace. Furthermore, you’re running the risk of poor attendance as well as late attendance.
If an event is mandatory, scheduling at the last minute increases the chances that some people won’t show up. This will not help you to conduct a meeting with all necessary personnel in attendance.
Beyond that, it is disrespectful of those who made it a point to make the meeting. Other co-workers and staff may be disgruntled if they rearranged schedules to get there. Conversely, timely scheduling of required meetings improves the chances of everyone being there.
But another issue with scheduling last minute events is that they could overlap appointments other attendees have. This may give them no time to reschedule either event and cause confusion due to schedule conflicts.
To prevent this confusion and the rescheduling of events, always set them as early as possible. That gives everyone ample time to add it to their agenda.
2. Inviting the Wrong People to Meetings
Another error that can cause shared calendar confusion is inviting the wrong people to meetings. When others share a calendar with you and see this error they may wonder just what is going on.
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For instance, inviting people who no longer work at your place of business may raise questions. Did that person get rehired? If not, why is their name among those attending the meeting?
Make sure you review what you’ve entered when blocking time in a shared calendar. If possible, take the time to do it before you send event notifications to anyone else.
3. Allowing Too Much or Too Little Time When Setting Up Events
One of the other problems with shared calendars is allowing too much or too little time when scheduling. If you want to successfully share access to one co-operative calendar, everyone must schedule appropriately.
In other words, don’t schedule for an hour and a half when an hour timeslot is plenty. On the other hand, don’t block out time that is clearly too short while knowing more time is needed. This causes meetings and events to run over and could cause tardiness for those with other appointments.
4. Waiting Too Long to Reschedule or Cancel Meetings
When calendars are shared in the workplace you must keep yours up to date. Otherwise you run the risk of waiting too long to reschedule or cancel events.
The result is that co-workers may show up for meetings that were canceled or moved to another day or time. The shared calendar confusion this causes wastes valuable company time and slows productivity.
Clearly there are a lot of really good reasons to share calendars among co-workers. But sometimes calendar errors cause shared calendar confusion. Avoid the errors mentioned here to have greater success in calendar sharing and better overall productivity.