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

by Jaewon Yoon, Grant Donnelly and Ashley V. Whillans

Abstract

Setting deadlines can improve productivity. Yet, miscalibrated deadlines are a major source of stress, undermining employees’ health and happiness. An effective strategy to maximize the benefits of deadlines while minimizing the costs could be to set task deadlines and adjust them as needed. However, results from six studies (N = 4,297) show that employees frequently avoid requesting extensions on adjustable deadlines, instead submitting suboptimal work. Employees’ reluctance to ask for deadline extensions is driven by self-presentation concerns: employees believe that their supervisors will view them as incompetent if they request a deadline extension. In contrast to these beliefs, supervisors actually perceive extension requests as a sign of greater motivation (vs. incompetence). These findings suggest that employees often underutilize a proactive behavior at work—making extension requests on adjustable deadlines—due to incorrect perspective taking and suffer from unnecessary time stress as a result.

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

Language: English

Format: Print

56 pages

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Citation:

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

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Appendix

When it comes to our to-do lists, many of us prioritize checking off tasks that are easiest to complete or are due first, regardless of importance – a phenomenon that scholars describe as the “mere urgency” effect. This tendency becomes stronger the busier we are. But constantly prioritizing urgent tasks means that important tasks that have no urgent deadline (such as updating your resume or doing creative work) get pushed aside for later and later. Some just never get done. When we fail to do what’s important, often what matters most to us, we feel stressed, overwhelmed, and unmotivated— and firms are less productive. Research suggests managers can help employees combat the tendency to put off for tomorrow what isn’t due today: have employees set aside proactive time for work that is important but not urgent.

There is a growing debate about whether high-income individuals are more or less generous when income inequality is high. We advance this ongoing conversation by analysing a large and comprehensive data set with approximately one million respondents from 140 countries. In this data set, higher-income individuals who live in countries with greater income inequality are less likely to donate money to charity and are more likely to volunteer than their lower-income counterparts. Higher-income individuals who feel financially insecure or show distrust of others are especially unlikely to donate money to charity under high income inequality. These moderators do not influence rates of volunteering. Together, these results advance the debate regarding whether and when inequality shapes prosocial behaviour.

Over the last two decades, global wealth has risen. Yet, material affluence has not translated into time affluence. Instead, most people today report feeling persistently “time poor”—like they have too many things to do and not enough time to do them. This is critical because time poverty is linked to lower well-being, physical health, and productivity. For example, in our analysis of 2.5 million Americans, subjective feelings of time poverty had a stronger negative effect on well-being than being unemployed. However, individuals, organisations, and policymakers often overlook the pernicious effects of time poverty. Billions of dollars are spent each year to alleviate material poverty, while time poverty is often ignored or exacerbated. In this Perspective, we discuss the organisational, institutional, and psychological factors that explain why time poverty is often under appreciated. We argue that scientists, policymakers, and organisational leaders need to devote more attention and resources toward understanding and reducing time poverty to promote psychological and economic well-being.

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

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