Is Human Error To Blame? Quick Tips For Your Business
Human error is one of those things that we often treat very seriously. When someone does something wrong, our instinct is to go on the offensive. We expect that they shouldn’t be making mistakes, especially when they’re gigantic ones.
But, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that human error is a very common thing. It’s time to explore this often overlooked topic in a bit more detail with some tips and facts.
Tip #1: Human Error is 80% badly designed systems
We’re taking our first fact from Ginette M Collazo’s website. It mentions that human error is 80% badly designed systems and only 20% is down to the human. So, when your employee makes a so-called ‘error’, there might be more to it than that.
Ultimately, we rely on automated software and processes to such an extent that we expect them to function as intended. But, if they’re not calibrated or implemented in an effective manner, human error is bound to result.
Tip #2: It’s Human Nature
Human error will occur, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it entirely. Of course, the more effort you put into your workplace safety management, the less likely it is to become a problem.
However, there are a few things that you can’t control. The way in which an employee decides to take a relaxed attitude is one. A sense of overfamiliarity and overconfidence can also result in a human error occurrence.
Tip #3: It Can Cause Mental Health Issues
When a human error incident causes a catastrophic problem for our business, we don’t take kindly to it. We often go on the offensive as mentioned earlier, questioning the employee about their incompetence. This is a natural reaction, but it isn’t doing any good in the long term. In fact, you’ll find that many employees can suffer from mental health issues as a result of what happened.
They might feel like they’ve let you down, let the business down and are useless in their role. It might just cause a long-term mental health problem if you’re not careful. To prevent this, look to crisis intervention management by Health Assured or something similar. They didn’t mean to make this human error, so forgiveness and support are crucial.
Tip #4: Workplace Culture Is Important
We’ve talked about what you can’t control, and what you can do in the event of a human error occurring. But, let’s delve a little further into what can be done in terms of prevention. Well, workplace culture is an important consideration.
Good employers will make human error questions part of the interview process. You want to make sure that your employees will admit to mistakes and not feel victimised for them. If you can establish this type of culture, you can put a stop to any issues before they become worse.
Tip #5: Surveys Can Be Useful
Yet another effective prevention technique comes in the form of surveys. By questioning and surveying your employees on a regular basis, you can get a good picture of their current mindset. This can then work to identify risk, showcasing trends that might highlight the potential for human error.
It can also work to better understand the training needs of individuals, as well as employee happiness. These surveys can be created at places like SurveyMonkey, and they don’t have to be human error-related. You might tailor them around employee needs or bonus schemes, and you’ll still find useful trends along the way.
Tip #6: It Should Be Accounted For
After everything we’ve talked about thus far, it’s safe to say that human error should be accounted for. By doing this, you can minimise the damage of a human error occurrence in all sorts of ways. How do you do this? Start with an emergency backup plan for every type of incident you can think of. Your employee deletes important data?
You need to have a cloud storage backup or something similar to recover it. Your employee breaks an ultra-expensive piece of equipment? You should have already thought about insurance to cover it. Without accounting for human error, you’ll have to pay the price for any incidents that occur.
Tip #7: Less than 10% of human errors are related to the individual
Let’s finish on this, which is a callback to the first tip we mentioned. Once again, using the information from the Ginette M Collazo site, we learn that just 10% of errors are related to the individual. So, there are a vast number of factors that can influence why a human error occurs. The next time your business suffers from a human error incident, keep in mind that the reasons behind it might not be so cut-and-dry.
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