Three Types of Human Error That Could Be Impacting Your Workplace

To err is human, and we all make mistakes from time to time. However, human error can be dangerous when it comes to the workplace; human error is responsible for up to 90% of workplace accidents. Reducing human error can be essential for optimizing the efficiency of your business and keeping your employees happy, healthy, and safe. Here are three types of human error that could secretly be impacting your workplace.

• Attention Failures: Sometimes, over the course of a long work day, it’s easy for employees to space out and run on auto-pilot. Particularly if tasks are repetitive, they can become difficult to concentrate on, leading to attention failures in the workplace. By keeping daily tasks cognitively stimulating and non-repetitive, it is possible to limit certain accidents on the job. If the work itself is difficult to change, providing additional breaks or resources to promote cognitive stimulation throughout the day could also help reduce workplace accidents caused by attention failures.

• Cognitive Load Failures: Cognitive load failures, or memory failures, have many potential causes. They could be the result of an overload of relevant or irrelevant information, external stress, or a lack of cognitive intrigue while the information was being encoded. There are several steps within the memory process that could lapse and cause this particular type of human error. If cognitive load failures seem to occur often in your workplace, it may be worth conducting some human error investigation to determine the best way to address this problem.

• Errors Caused By Physical Exhaustion: Tired workers are far more likely to make mistakes on the job than well-rested workers. Whether the exhaustion is coming from the work itself or from external factors like home and family life, it can cause major issues for your company’s job safety. Providing workers with enough breaks proportional to the physical and psychological demands of their work and additional resources to help cope with external stress can help to improve exhaustion, and ensure that your workplace is as safe as possible.

Looking for some additional help with reducing human error within your place of work? Visit humanerrorsolutions.com to see what options are available for you and your company.