It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

Jaewon  Yoon; Grant  Donnelly; Ashley V. Whillans

Working Paper | HBS Working Paper Series | 2019

It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

by Jaewon Yoon, Grant Donnelly and Ashley V. Whillans

Abstract

Employees today experience high levels of time stress at work, undermining their health, happiness, and productivity. In this paper, we propose a novel cause and possible solution to the stressful feeling of not having enough time to complete one’s tasks at work: employees’ willingness to ask for deadline extensions. Results from one archival data and ten experiments (N = 7,241) suggest that employees avoid asking for more time and submit suboptimal work, even when supervisors often readily grant their employees more time. We document a mechanism for these results: Employees fail to ask for extensions due to the belief that asking for more time will cause them to look incompetent in the eyes of their supervisors. Yet, supervisors do not necessarily perceive extension requests as a sign of incompetence. These findings highlight a previously unexplored impression management strategy in the workplace – avoiding extension requests – as a contributor to unnecessary time stress at work.

Keywords: extension request; impression management; Employees; Time Management; Perception;

Language: English

Format: Print

92 pages

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Citation:

Yoon, Jaewon, Grant Donnelly, and Ashley V. Whillans. "It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-064, January 2019.

Across five field experiments with employees of a large organization (N=68, 915), we examined whether standard behavioral science interventions (i.e., ‘nudges’) successfully reduced single occupancy vehicle commutes. In Study 1-2, we sent letters and emails that included standard nudges to increase carpooling. These interventions failed to meaningfully increase carpool sign-up or usage. In Studies 3-5, we examined the efficacy of two other well-established behaviorally-informed interventions: non-cash incentives and personalized travel plans. Again, we found no meaningful effects. Across studies the effect sizes were d=[-0.01, 0.05], with a meta-analytic effect size of d = 0.02, 95CI [-0.02, 0.06]. Equivalence testing reveals that the effect size of four of the studies is statistically equivalent to zero (p < 0.0001). Our paper presents the first set of highly powered behaviorally informed experiments on these outcomes and highlights the importance of publishing null results to build cumulative knowledge about how to encourage sustainable travel.

You have had a tough day at work. Your presentation did not go well; your boss harshly critiqued your performance; a colleague was promoted to a position you had hoped to fill; and, on top of it all, some of your coworkers planned to go out after work and you were not invited. Anyone would feel lousy at the end of this day. But what helps you learn from these experiences and get back to business tomorrow is resilience. Resilience, the ability to adapt and recover from personal and professional setbacks, is increasingly recognized as a key driver of job performance. For those who lack resilience, a bad day can seriously throw them off their game, lowering their sense of worth, attitude toward their job, and work performance. In our recent research, we looked at whether using a brief, online intervention could build resilience in employees. We found that distressed employees who used such an intervention a few times per week showed significantly greater increases in resilience than employees who did not.

Deadlines are one of the biggest sources of stress in the workplace. Yet, many are flexible: Your manager might ask you to submit a proposal for a long-term project by Friday, but not plan to look at it until Tuesday. Could asking for more time (when we need it) be a simple way to avoid feeling panicked and overwhelmed? While it’s common to believe that pushing back a deadline might reflect poorly on us and be seen as unprofessional, we know relatively little from research about the actual consequences of asking for more time. To better understand this, we conducted 10 experiments and a survey with nearly 10,000 employees and managers in the United States. We found that, across occupations, asking for more time to work on an assignment was, on average, perceived positively by managers—and it reduced employees’ stress levels and improved their performance. In one survey—of 191 employees—we found that 95% of those who asked their manager for a deadline extension received one.

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It Doesn't Hurt to Ask (for More Time): Employees Overestimate the Interpersonal Costs of Extension Requests

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