Non-Distortionary Task Reallocation
RCTReview
Managers fear that pushing employees to accelerate task completion early in a cycle might force them to lower screening standards or accept low-quality output to meet early targets.
Picture this
Reallocating administrative focus early in the month allows time-constrained workers to spend more time on thorough evaluation early on and adequate collection efforts later, rather than cutting corners under deadline pressure. Think of prepping ingredients before dinner service begins; early preparation improves food quality without rushing the final dish.
What the evidence says
The intervention produced no statistically significant change in branch delinquency rates for current loans (total delinquency coeff = 0.011, p > 0.10) or future 2-month lagged delinquency (coeff = 0.006, p > 0.10), proving that frontloading loan placement by 18% in weeks 1–2 did not compromise credit screening standards.
- Who was studied
- N = 61 bank branches in Colombia managing ~$160 million in loans across ~180,000 micro-business clients.
- How
- Difference-in-differences panel regression comparing contemporaneous delinquency rates and 2-month lagged future delinquency rates between 31 treatment and 30 control branches.
What to do
Monitor quality and default metrics alongside early-period production targets to verify that accelerated production velocity does not compromise output quality.
From the source
"This shift in loan sourcing does not lead to a change in credit quality since we find no change in the delinquency rate between treatment and control groups after the implementation of the program."
Fighting Procrastination in the Workplace- An Experiment.pdf