Some of you may have worked with colleagues who seem to have little regard for timeliness, schedules, or deadlines—and some of you may even place yourselves in that category. These workers may be routinely late to the office or late logging in for a remote work session or a meeting, or they might routinely submit assignments after their due dates.
Why Some People Are Tardy
So why are some people more prone to tardiness than others? And, importantly for employers and managers, can anything be done to make them more schedule-conscious? This is the question Dan John takes on in a video for BBC in which he discusses the psychology behind the tendency to be late, as well as the extent to which that tendency is inherent or learned—nature or nurture.
In the video, John interviews Grace Pacie, author of Late! – A Timebender’s Guide to Why We Are Late and How We Can Change. She calls those who tend to be late “time-benders” and says these people struggle with keeping time commitments generally but that they can be very productive and even reliable in meeting time commitments under the right circumstances.
Imposing Deadline with Real Consequences
One of the key elements in improving someone’s timeliness, Pacie and John argue, is imposing deadlines that have meaningful consequences. John gives the personal example of how he, as someone who self-identifies as a time-bender, is never late for flights. The possible consequence of being late for a flight is missing said flight, along with the cost, time, and hassle of getting a replacement flight.
For managers who have time-bender subordinates, imposing real deadlines with real consequences for missing those deadlines can be a useful strategy. Sometimes, real deadlines with real consequences are inherent in the assignment, such as in the example of a lawyer who may have to file a court brief by a certain deadline or face a loss of legal remedies or even malpractice allegations if he or she fails to do so.
Other tasks may need deadlines that are more arbitrary. For example, rather than giving a time-bender an assignment with no explicit deadline, managers can tell the worker they want the completed assignment in no more than 2 weeks and that adherence to deadlines is a measurement for performance appraisals, job level increases, and compensation.
Working with someone who is habitually late can be frustrating, and it’s easy for managers and coworkers to dismiss so-called “time-benders” as inherently inconsiderate, irresponsible, or even incompetent. However, this type of tardiness doesn’t have to be a permanent condition, and managers can use the above methods to encourage greater timeliness among their staff.
Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.