What is Human Error? A Clear Guide to Causes and Prevention Strategies

Mistakes and accidents that occur in companies and organizations have various causes. One of these is human error. Depending on the scale of human mistakes, there is potential for situations that could result in the loss of an entire company's profits and social credibility. Therefore, it is important to learn about human error and solve problems by building an appropriate work environment. This article explains human error prevention strategies while covering what human error is, its types and specific examples, and main causes.

What is Human Error?

Human error refers to mistakes and accidents caused by human judgment, misunderstandings, or incorrect actions. Also called human mistakes, they mainly occur due to carelessness, lack of knowledge, or misunderstanding. Human error, which can be a problem in various industries, causes significant losses to companies by reducing quality and work efficiency and increasing safety risks. Therefore, corporate organizations need to correctly understand the causes of human error and implement appropriate countermeasures.

Types of Human Error

Human error can be broadly classified into two types.

Intentional Human Error

Intentional human error refers to deliberate errors. These occur when procedures and rules are intentionally ignored, or when shortcuts are deliberately taken. For example, causes vary, such as skipping steps based on personal judgment to finish work quickly, or breaking rules based on individual judgment.

Unintentional Human Error

Unintentional human error refers to errors caused by careless mistakes or lack of attention. These can be called human errors due to "negligence" rather than "intent." These errors have various causes, including lack of knowledge or experience, carelessness or fatigue, misunderstanding, and stress. Typical examples include overlooking work procedures, incorrect machine operation, missing instructions or misreading, and work failures.

Specific Examples of Human Error

Human error occurs in every industry and company. Let's look at specific examples of human error.

Examples of intentional human error include:

• Order mistakes occurred as a result of ignoring check procedures when confirming order details.

• Incorrect transmission occurred by omitting the double-check that was standardized for address verification before sending emails.

• Defective products were produced because work procedures were intentionally cut due to lack of time.

All of these are errors that occurred by neglecting what should have been done.

On the other hand, unintentional errors due to negligence include cases such as:

• Providing the wrong product due to mishearing telephone orders.

• Skipping one page of work procedures due to decreased attention from fatigue, resulting in quality degradation.

• Causing serious injury due to incorrect machine operation.

These errors are unexpected mistakes.

Additionally, there are cases where multiple human errors occur in a chain reaction, developing into major accidents.

For example, the 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident and the 2000 Concorde crash were also tragic accidents caused by chains of human error.

It is important to recognize how serious accidents human error can cause and implement thorough countermeasures.

Main Causes of Human Error

Human error has various causes, including psychological factors and work environment. Let's look at the main causes of human error.

Assumptions

Assumptions arise from incorrect judgments based on past experience and preconceptions. For example, in routine daily work, the fixed idea that "this work is always done, so it should be fine" leads to lack of attention to details and confirmation mistakes, causing assumptions. This can cause unconscious skipping of procedures even in usual work, and makes it difficult to notice when procedures or information have changed, inducing human error.

Carelessness

Carelessness is a factor in mistakes caused by decreased concentration or lack of attention. Particularly, long working hours and repetitive monotonous work reduce concentration. Also, surrounding noise in the work environment and visual obstructions are causes of carelessness. Carelessness often occurs when adequate breaks and workplace environment maintenance are neglected.

Lack of Knowledge and Experience

Lack of knowledge and experience causes human error because accurate judgment and response necessary for work cannot be made. Employees who have transferred departments or new employees often do not sufficiently understand specialized knowledge or work procedures. Therefore, if work is carried out with incorrect procedures, mistakes increase and human error occurs.

Complacency Due to Familiarity

Complacency due to familiarity with work also makes mistakes more likely. When continuing the same work for several years, basic procedures and confirmation work tend to be omitted. Personal feelings of "this much should be fine" emerge. The more veteran the employee, the higher the possibility of familiarity and complacency appearing, so caution is necessary.

Communication Mistakes

Communication mistakes such as insufficient information transmission or misunderstanding lead to human error. Vague verbal instructions or insufficient reports are causes that hinder accurate work execution. For example, there are cases where important information is not transmitted or incorrect information is transmitted due to insufficient coordination between different departments. Communication mistakes are one of the major causes leading to smooth work obstruction and mistakes.

Communication Errors

Communication errors are caused by insufficient information sharing within teams, between departments, and with colleagues or supervisors. In organizations where communication such as reporting, contact, and consultation is not conducted smoothly, important information is not properly transmitted and shared, causing work duplication and task omissions.

Fatigue and Stress

Long working hours, overly strict discipline, and inappropriate work environments accumulate fatigue and stress. Excessive fatigue and stress cause decreased concentration and judgment, increasing the occurrence of human error. Also, when faced with short deadlines or difficult problem-solving, fatigue and stress are easily felt, and normal judgment may become impossible.

Workplace Environment

Poor workplace environment significantly reduces work efficiency and causes human error. For example, inadequate temperature control at the site, with room temperature being too hot or too cold, reduces concentration. Also, lighting that is too dark or constant noise are causes that induce mistakes. Narrow work spaces make physical mistakes more likely. Such workplace environments have a high possibility of generating human error.

Procedure Omission

Omitting procedures for benefits such as work time reduction causes serious accidents and mistakes. By skipping necessary procedures such as confirmation, verification, and inspection, small mistakes that should be noticed are overlooked and may later develop into major accidents. While awareness of improving productivity is necessary, omitting procedures and rules can lead to serious problems such as compliance violations.

Unstable Psychological State

Work execution in an unstable psychological state makes human error more likely. When psychological state becomes unstable due to workplace relationships or personal problems, lack of attention, decreased judgment, and apathy affect and make mistakes more likely.

9 Strategies for Human Error Prevention

If the causes of human error can be identified and analyzed, they can be prevented in advance. Here are 9 strategies for preventing human error.

1. Review Business Processes

Complex work procedures cause work mistakes and confusion. Inefficient business flows are factors that cause employees to seek efficiency in their own way. As a human error prevention measure, it's good to start by reviewing current business processes. Business flows must be designed to be simple and easy to understand. It's important to organize wasteful and duplicate processes, and actively incorporate employee requests and feedback to improve business flows suitable for field work processes.

2. Conduct Risk Prediction Activities

Risk prediction activities involve identifying potential risks in advance and implementing appropriate countermeasures for each. Potential risks are regularly picked up through employee interviews and other means. Based on this, employees must be made aware of "the possibility of risks such as XX" and be conscious of risks in daily work. These activities lead to improved safety awareness and problem-solving abilities among employees and are effective for human error prevention.

3. Activate Communication

Communication is essential for preventing human error. Communication between employees and with supervisors, as well as information sharing between departments, reduces insufficient information transmission and misunderstanding. Actively conducting close reporting, contact, and consultation within the organization is important for realizing an open workplace environment where opinions and questions can be discussed.

4. Visualize Work and Tasks

Visualizing work and tasks helps manage the work and burden of each employee. For example, if there are employees carrying excessive burdens, it's necessary to take measures such as distributing work load. At this time, it's important to manage while looking at the overall balance so that it doesn't concentrate on specific employees. Also, if it's visually clear who is performing what tasks, it leads to preventing work duplication and omissions. IT tools should be used for visualizing work and tasks.

5. Safety-First Awareness

Human error can sometimes develop into employee injuries and accidents. Therefore, it's important to share the awareness of prioritizing safety above all else throughout the organization. First, clearly define the mindset and procedures for working safely, and conduct regular education and training. Management actively implementing such measures and instilling the awareness that "safety must be the top priority" leads to human error prevention.

6. Training and Education for Human Error Prevention

What's necessary for preventing human error is daily mindset. In addition to skills and knowledge, constantly being aware of "when human error occurs" can prevent mistakes due to negligence. Effective for this is training and education themed on human error prevention. Regularly conduct simulations and training based on specific examples to create opportunities to learn the causes and countermeasures of human error.

7. Create Manuals

Creating manuals and sharing unified work procedures, precautions, and common mistakes leads to human error prevention. The point is to create manuals that are easy to understand even for employees performing work for the first time. Also, it's important to regularly review and continuously update with the latest information.

8. Improve Workplace Environment

Workplace environment greatly affects employee attention and productivity. Building comfortable workplaces, room temperature, and environments with appropriate sound and light for work leads to human error prevention. Workplace environment needs to be maintained to reduce physical and mental burden as much as possible. Listen to the opinions of employees working on-site and improve toward a comfortable workplace environment.

9. Tool Implementation

For work where mistakes easily occur in manual work, implementing tools to prevent human error is effective. For example, if automation tools are introduced for data entry work on computers, input mistakes can be reduced. Systems with error check functions can notice input mistakes, which helps work efficiency. By automating work that can be standardized in overall business with tools, human error can be significantly reduced. Also, depending on industries such as manufacturing, AI technology for abnormality detection prediction is being introduced, and various IT technologies are being utilized for human error prevention.

Human Error Prevention Using IT Tools

IT tools are recommended for work with frequent human error occurrence. For example, if routine work in computer operations and input work is automated, human error can be significantly reduced.

A representative automation tool is "RPA." RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is a general term for tools that automate computer work through robots. While not suitable for work requiring human judgment or business with changing procedures each time, introducing RPA for routine work eliminates mistakes. Not only can human error be prevented, but significant work efficiency improvement is possible.

Also, groupware should be utilized for business process improvement and communication activation for human error prevention. By managing business processes suitable for your company with groupware, information sharing and visualization of work and tasks become possible.

Furthermore, RPA and groupware can be combined for use. For example, by automating work that extracts and aggregates data from groupware schedule functions, or work that extracts and transfers application information from workflow functions, human error will not occur in these processes.

Thus, human error prevention is achievable by skillfully utilizing IT tools. Various products are provided for IT tools. Identify parts where RPA and groupware can be introduced in your company's business processes and select suitable IT tools.

Summary

Human actions and work inevitably create mistakes and misunderstandings. Work environment and psychological influences cause human error. However, by understanding the causes and implementing countermeasures, human error can be minimized. After understanding the types and specific examples of human error introduced in this article and the importance of business processes and communication, conduct company-wide training and education to build a system where each employee can be aware of human error prevention. Also, consider introducing IT tools for routine work.

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