In today's business environment, where efficiency and safety are paramount, managing human risks and preventing errors have become crucial to the success of any business. Human errors are unavoidable and can severely affect safety, efficiency, and quality.
A thorough understanding of the fundamentals of human error is essential to developing effective error prevention strategies for companies that want to manage risk and improve performance properly. To this end, we will analyze the fundamentals of risk management, its relationship with human errors, as well as the implications of these errors in the business environment.
This ebook aims to provide a comprehensive overview of human risk management and error prevention, addressing everything from importance to strategies and best practices for proper implementation to ensure results.
Operational risk culture refers to how a company addresses and manages operational risks in its daily tasks, i.e., those arising from a company's activity. Examples include process, human error, IT system failures, and unforeseen external events.
Human risk management refers to the identification, analysis, evaluation, and mitigation of risks related to people in a company. To this end, proactive measures must be taken to significantly reduce the negative impacts that human activities in the workplace can cause.
The human risk management process aims to protect employees' health, safety, and well-being and prevent accidents, injuries, and occupational diseases. To this end, specific risks related to work activities are identified, the percentage of occurrence and their potential impact are evaluated, and finally, control and mitigation measures are applied to reduce these risks to acceptable levels.
Risk management and human error prevention are fundamental in any company because they allow one to identify and address potential hazards or threats affecting the organization, its employees, customers, and assets. Human error prevention aims to reduce the mistakes made by people when performing their tasks and responsibilities.
The implementation of this process allows companies to anticipate possible incidents so that they can take adequate measures to mitigate them. By identifying potential risks and assessing their impact, companies can implement the corresponding strategies and preventive measures to avoid serious problems, such as business accidents.
Mistakes made by people can have severe consequences because a simple error within the process can trigger a chain of undesired events. In addition, human errors can affect the quality of the products or services offered, affecting customer satisfaction and the company's image.
The management is based on a systematic and proactive approach to human errors. The following steps are required for this process:
First, human factors contributing to errors, such as inattention, fatigue, stress, lack of training, and other psychological and social factors, are detected.
The probability of errors and their potential impact on safety, quality, and efficiency are analyzed. Tools such as risk analysis, critical task evaluations, and review of previous incidents are used for this purpose.
Measures are implemented to prevent or mitigate identified human errors, such as improvement of work procedures, training, awareness, design of ergonomic systems and equipment, and promotion of a safety culture.
Finally, the implemented controls are regularly monitored, and adjustments and improvements are made on a case-by-case basis. In this way, learning from incidents and employee feedback is encouraged to identify new areas for improvement.
Human errors refer to unintentional or unintended actions or decisions that result in an undesirable or incorrect outcome. Such errors can occur in any work environment and are influenced by various individual, organizational, or contextual factors.
Different types of human errors occur in the work environment. Some of the most common are as follows:
Training to deal with human error is crucial to ensure safety and efficiency in the work environment. Therefore, it is necessary to implement two key strategies to prevent human errors: training and awareness.
According to Smartsheet, technology enables automation of internal systems and processes to prevent and mitigate human error by 68%. It can increase the speed and efficiency of any phase of a business organization's lifecycle, from customer data collection and entry, verification and control processes, use of technology resources, order management, inventory management, scheduling, shipping, transportation, and more.
Integrating technology tools brings greater accuracy and consistency to operations because a software or machine is not affected by stress, fatigue, poor training, poor memory, or multi-tasking, which affects people. An employee who has been working more than eight hours and has spent all day in front of the computer reading and discarding emails, or a new employee with little training, can open a malicious email because fatigue or lack of knowledge prevents him from being attentive to irregular email signals, and become a victim of phishing, data breach or execute a malware that affects the organization.
For them, IT tools within the processes can process a large volume of complex data; they can even make technical spam filters detect and issue alerts immediately on errors or incorrect data so that they are corrected or removed from the organization's database and optimize its quality. This is a strength for businesses that can reduce risks related to incorrect data or analysis, which improves decisions and avoids delays, bottlenecks, and financial losses.
According to a survey conducted by Smartsheet, employees spend a quarter of their working hours per week on repetitive tasks, such as entering, collecting and deleting data, and opening and archiving emails, which constitutes a waste of staff time and effort that could be invested in strategic and fundamental tasks for the organization.
Human errors are one of the leading causes of operational risks companies face today. Pirani is an IT tool that automates and simplifies the control and prevention of this type of threat. To this end, the software can be configured according to national and international protocols and regulations (ISO 31000, Basel II, COSO ERM, etc.) that must be complied with in the organization's different areas to avoid penalties or financial losses.
In addition, the tool helps to consolidate a more effective risk management culture that involves all areas and members of the organization, so there is decentralized risk monitoring. The tool's level of automation and accuracy reduces the operational burden and the possibility of risks due to human error by 60%. The vital point is that it offers risk indicators and reports in real-time to enhance decision-making, in addition to its alerting system from mobile devices notifying of any event or anomaly immediately to provide a rapid response.
Below are 2 case studies of consequences that clearly show how human error contributes to the paralysis of operations within an organization and generates severe financial losses.
LinkedIn is a unique social network in that it has a professional focus. Founded on June 1, 2002, it is the world's largest professional platform that connects employees and employers and helps people find the ideal job or internship based on their profile. In addition, it allows employees to know the profile companies are looking for and what skills and knowledge they should have to achieve professional success.
However, on November 30, 2017, millions of LinkedIn users in the United States could not access their accounts, a problem that lasted for several hours until the portal www.linkedin.com became aware of the issue. The problem arose because the department staff in charge of renewing the SSL certificates of the subdomains by country did not remember to do it, leaving the link us.linkedin.com when the domain SSL certificate expired.
One of the biggest problems with the expiration of certificates is that all account information is exposed to cybercriminals, who can impersonate the platform and use the personal information of users, emails, phone numbers, addresses, and by the nature of the LinkedIn access to all professional information and usurp the identity.
Fortunately for LinkedIn and its users, they implemented a new DigiCert SHA2 Secure Server CA certificate and restored their online connection, and users could log in.
Ericsson is a Swedish multinational company that has positioned itself as a leader in telecommunications, providing users with hardware, software, and telephony services to ensure maximum connectivity. Despite this precise objective, on December 6, 2018, Ericsson stopped offering cell phone services to more than 32 million people in the United Kingdom, which affected 11 other countries.
One of the big problems of human error is that it can cause paralysis or suspension of operations and jeopardize the company's continuity. In the case of Ericsson, the employees did not renew the digital certificate for the use of its Serving GPRS Support Node-Mobility Management Entity software; this omission by the manager generated an interruption of recognized mobile operators in the UK, which use Ericsson services, such as O2, GiffGaff, Lyca, etc.
The expiration of the security certificate prevented users from accessing 4G networks and messaging services (SMS). However, the most critical point of this downtime is the danger to essential data since when the certificate expired, the security system was left open to hackers.
Fortunately, the error was corrected, and by the evening of the same day, the most affected users had access to the mobile network again and decided to decommission the software to avoid future interruptions.
The control and prevention of human errors within business organizations are vital to mitigate operational risk and ensure the proper functioning of all internal activities. Although the human factor is a critical part of any company, they can become a weakness if they do not have the necessary training, knowledge, and tools to perform their functions. To achieve this, companies must adopt proactive measures that foster a culture of error prevention and establish assertive and reliable communication mechanisms in which employees can point out failures instead of covering them up.
There are several key points that business organizations should focus on, such as a robust employee training and education program to equip employees with the essential knowledge and skills to accomplish each of their assigned tasks accurately and efficiently. It is necessary that such training be ongoing and constantly reinforced and updated to achieve a complete understanding of what a mistake can be and the consequences it could generate.
In addition, we insist on creating an open communication environment in which members feel supported. Encourage employees to communicate about any possible error or accident without fear of retaliation since early detection of the error can facilitate its rapid solution. Regular safety meetings, transparent policies, and even anonymous communication channels are necessary to achieve this open environment.
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