Employees Rarely Ask for Extensions but Often They Should
Deadlines are a major source of on-the-job stress, and workers tend to regard them as immutable—an unfortunate but unalterable fact of life. But what if there’s a simple solution to the pressure they impose?
A new study examines employees’ reluctance to ask for more time and finds that it is largely misplaced. The researchers conducted 10 experiments involving 7,241 participants in all. Some people were asked to imagine or perform tasks such as essay writing and event planning and given opportunities to request more time; others served as their supervisors. People avoided asking for extensions, primarily because they thought they’d be seen as incompetent—but that fear was misplaced. Supervisors rated participants who sought extra time as equally competent and more motivated than their counterparts and were generally open to granting leeway.
For employees, “asking [for] and receiving more time may lead to reduced task stress and improved task performance,” the researchers write. As for managers, they should “strategically think about ways to encourage employees to ask for more time when they need it, without the fear of being negatively judged. To do so, [they] may need to… clarify that (1) an extension request does not signal incompetence and (2) the benefits of extra time could be more substantial than employees may believe.”
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