Delivering work late has more complex consequences than you might think, influencing the judgment of those who should evaluate it: how? Here’s what researchers just discovered.
Delivering work after the deadline negatively affects the perception of its quality, regardless of the quality of the work itself / Photo Credit iStock
It has probably happened to everyone that we are unable to meet some deadline and, for example, turn in work late. With what consequences? A new study has focused on the impact that missing the deadline has on those who evaluate the submitted work, reaching an unexpected conclusion. Turning in work late affects the perception of its qualityregardless of the quality of the work itself. The results of the study, published in the magazine Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processesin fact, show how the delivery deadlines were not respected negatively influences judgment of those who evaluate the work presented, also influencing the evaluation of the worker.
What is triggered, explain the authors of the study, is “a process of reducing confidence related to skills” which leads evaluators to be less likely to ask that employee to do other work in the future. “This may limit the worker’s opportunities to demonstrate their value and obtain promotions in the future” the researchers noted.
What happens when you turn in work late
Turning in work late negatively affects its perceived qualityregardless of the quality of the work itself. This is what emerges from eight laboratory and field tests, supplemented by 10 complementary studies, which involved almost 7,000 peopleas part of an investigation to examine the consequences of missing deadlines.
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When the work is completed later than initially expected or agreed upon, the deadline violation ends to have a direct impact on the integrity of the work itself: This is largely because missing a deadline causes evaluators to view the worker as less competent, having needed more time to complete the work. This leads them to think that work is also lacking.
“We wanted to know how meeting a deadline affected you on the mind and actions of those who evaluate the work – explained the co-author of the study, Sam Maglio, an expert in cognition and motivation, professor of marketing at the Scarborough and Rotman School of Management of the University of Toronto, in Canada –. All evaluators they couldn’t help but remember the time at which the work was submitted in formulating an evaluation of its quality”.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers interviewed thousands of people, including managers, executives, human resources personnel and other personal figures who are responsible for evaluating the work of others: these people presented the same work – such as advertising flyers, commercial proposals, product launches, photographs and newspaper articles –, asking them to evaluate it. However, before the evaluation, the interviewees referred to delivery times: Those who were aware of a delay in delivery consistently evaluated the work as of inferior quality compared to those who knew that the same job had been delivered early or on time.
The study also found that there are no particular advantages when delivering work early, because evaluators tend to classify work delivered before or on deadline as the same quality. In fact, the early delivery did not significantly improve the evaluator’s opinion of the worker.
On the contrary, late delivery had a negative impact the evaluator’s opinion on the work, considered as deficient as that which presented objective quality deficiencies, such as failure to comply with a certain number of words. The evaluators didn’t even care how late the work was delivered: whether it arrived a day or a week after the deadline, the worker and the work were still viewed negatively. This impact was observed even if the employee had notified their manager that they would not meet the deadline. And even for employees with a history of delivering work on time, missing the deadline it still damaged opinion on his competence in the eyes of the evaluators.
However, there is a however. Some of the damage could be avoided if it is provided a clear explanation of why for which the deadline was missed. Notably, if the reason was related to factors outside of the employee’s control, evaluators did not end up having as negative a view of the worker and the job as when the reason was something within their control. “Communication about deadlines is key – added Professor Maglio –. If the reason for delaying delivery is something beyond your controlas an employee you should let your manager know. This seems to be one of the few cases where people seem to be more flexible”.
Source: www.fanpage.it
