Bad news for the 82% of us who have missed deadlines: work submitted late is likely to be graded much lower
It turns out that missing a deadline has more complex consequences than you might think than just keeping people waiting for your work. Research from the University of Toronto found that people will think your work is lower in quality if you submit it late than if you were to submit the exact same work on time or early. David Fang was lead researcher on this study and he joined the Drivetime show on RTÉ Radio 1 to discuss the findings. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full below).
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, David Fang from the University of Toronto on research into perceptions around missed deadlines (discussion begins at 26 mins)
Fang explains that most research around deadlines tends to concentrate on how we feel about them rather than the impact of missing them, which is something that 82% of us have done at least once. "There's a lot of deadlines that we're working towards generally in the workplace. There's some research looking at how people react towards deadlines. For example, perhaps when you see deadlines, you're more likely to procrastinate or you feel anxiety.
"But there's not really much research looking at what happens when you miss these deadlines. How do people react? We really wanted to look at reactions towards missing deadlines, which are really quite common.
"We found that when people evaluate the work you submitted after missing a deadline, they're more likely to grade it much lower. For the same quality work that you submit, if that work is late, people will grade it lower, or they'll view it as being lower quality."
Fang's research also found that this applied even if you had a reputation for usually making your deadline. "We tested that in a lab and we had people evaluate work where the person either had a reputation of submitting work late or not. They both submitted work late, but we found no difference. People evaluated work pretty partially and pretty badly regardless of your reputation if you're late."
What about people who missed a deadline because they wanted the work to be a high standard? "We looked at how work would be evaluated by varying the objective quality of that work", explains Fang. "For example, we changed whether the work had typos or things like that that would deter from the quality of the work. We found that just the fact of submitting it late would have a detrimental effect even if you submitted an objectively higher quality work later. We also found no evaluation bonus from submitting work early."
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
