Preventing human error in business processes
Making mistakes is human. Making the same mistake twice is usually a process problem. On types of error, why training alone doesn’t help, and what does.
The wrong amount transferred. A quote sent to the wrong client. A former colleague’s account never cleaned up. Afterwards everyone wonders how it could have happened. The answer is almost always the same: not because someone was stupid or careless, but because the process was waiting for it.
Not every mistake is the same
The British psychologist James Reason drew a distinction that is still widely used. Roughly:
- Slips: you know what to do, but you do something else. You click the wrong line, mistype a figure.
- Lapses: you know what to do, but a step gets lost. You forget to move the OneDrive before deleting the account.
- Mistakes: you do what you think is right, but your knowledge or judgement is off. You think orders up to €5,000 are fine without sign-off, when the limit is €2,500.
- Violations: you know the rule, but you take a shortcut, often with good intentions and under time pressure.
The distinction is useful because each type needs a different fix. Training helps against mistakes in knowledge, but not against slips: those happen precisely with things you know well.
Why “pay more attention” doesn’t work
After an error the reflex is extra instructions, an email to everyone, “be more careful from now on”. It feels good but changes little. People already pay attention. Errors happen exactly when attention is elsewhere, which on a busy day is often.
A more useful question: how do we make the right behaviour the easiest behaviour, at the moment it counts?
What does work
Checklists for rare tasks
Aviation has used checklists for decades, and the World Health Organization introduced a surgical safety checklist for operating theatres. Not because pilots and surgeons don’t know their job, but because experienced people are exactly the ones who skip steps that seem obvious.
In a company, a checklist works best for tasks that come up too rarely to know by heart: someone leaving, a new supplier, the year-end close. Keep it short, with only the steps that actually get forgotten.
Make errors impossible
In manufacturing it’s called poka-yoke, an idea popularised through the Toyota Production System: design the process so an error can’t happen, or is noticed straight away. A plug that only fits one way. A form that won’t submit without a project number.
With office software you often don’t have that control: you can’t change your supplier’s online shop. You can make sure a check appears at the right moment.
A second pair of eyes where it counts
For actions with large or irreversible consequences, a second person helps. Not everywhere, because that turns into rubber-stamping, but for large amounts, changed bank details and granting admin rights.
Information at the moment of action
Many misjudgements happen because knowledge is in the wrong place. The agreement lives in a handbook; the work happens in a web portal. The fix is to show the agreement where the work happens, at the moment it matters. Not as a wall of text, but as one sentence: “We buy printers through our framework contract.”
A culture where mistakes get reported
You can only learn from mistakes you know about. If reporting leads to blame, less gets reported. Treat an error as information about the process: where was the gap, and how do we close it?
Learning from every mistake
A simple approach after an incident or near miss:
- What exactly happened? Facts, not blame.
- At what moment could it have been stopped? There’s usually one clear moment: the click on Pay, Order or Delete.
- What should the person have known or seen at that moment?
- How do we make sure it’s visible at that moment next time?
That way every mistake becomes an improvement. Make a mistake once, not twice.
In short
- Errors have different causes; training only addresses some of them.
- Checklists work best for rare tasks.
- Make errors hard, and add checks where the consequences are large.
- Bring knowledge to the moment of action.
- Learn from every mistake without looking for someone to blame.
ClickCheck is built around that last idea: showing agreements at the moment of the click, without changing existing software. Read how ClickCheck works.