Are you the kind of person who gets the job done on time? Or do you always seem to end up turning things in late, mulling over your work for hours, or even days, to make sure it’s perfect?
If so, you might be interested to hear that missing deadlines could be detrimental to your career. So reports a study published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Its authors, David Fang and Sam Maglio, argue that timeliness directly influences perceptions of competence and integrity in the workplace. They found evidence of this after interviewing thousands of employees in the US and UK, including managers, executives, HR managers, and other employees accustomed to evaluating the work of others.
“The research that we could find looked at how deadlines impact the minds and actions of workers. We wanted to know how a deadline impacts the minds and actions of others when they look at those workers,” Maglio explained.
To do this, participants in the study were asked to grade various pieces of work (advertising leaflets, commercial offers, press articles, etc.), having been informed in advance of whether the work was submitted early, right at the deadline, or late. The aim was to find out whether this detail influenced their judgement.
And it would appear that it did: late submissions systematically received lower marks, with participants deeming them to be of lower quality, even when the content was identical.
“Everyone saw the exact same art contest entry, school submission or business proposal, but they couldn’t help but use their knowledge of when it came in to guide their evaluation of how good it was,” Maglio noted.
This harsher view is based on the fact that missing deadlines is perceived as a sign of incompetence or a lack of conscientiousness. And this holds true whether the work is a day late or a week late. Indeed, it doesn’t matter how far after the deadline the work arrives, late submission still tarnishes a professional reputation.
This evaluation bias transcends cultural and hierarchical boundaries: a study carried out among Chinese high school students supports the idea that meeting deadlines is a key evaluation criterion, even when no relationships of authority are involved.
In short, in the professional world as elsewhere, deadlines should be respected. Some delays are excusable, but they must be the result of unforeseen circumstances, not a lack of organisation.
If you suspect you won’t be able to meet the deadline set by your manager, let them know. Open communication is the best way to limit the damage.
Be careful not to overestimate the time it will take to complete a task – a behavioural bias known as the “planning fallacy”. Always leave yourself an extra margin of time to deal with unforeseen circumstances or setbacks.