Entering the working world can be a stressful if exciting thing, and it is important to remember that, no matter what, everyone is human. Mistakes will be made by new employees and seasoned professionals alike, and are, in many ways, unavoidable. But mistakes, though human, can have serious repercussions in the workplace, even when the career of the person who made the mistake is not directly caused impact. Mistakes can reduce productivity, waste company time, and cost money. And while some mistakes will always occur (as it is, after all, simply a part of human nature), there are steps that companies can take to directly reduce the number of mistakes that occur.

First, before we can look at solutions like human error prevention training and human error prevention tools, we must look at some of the repercussions of mistakes made in the workplace, as well as some of the causes of such errors. For one, mistakes made in the workplace can be dangerous, though this of course depends on the type of workplace that it is, as well as the type of work being conducted by the individual employee. When it comes to accidents that cause bodily harm in the typical workplace, it turns out that human error is behind more than half of them, directly or even indirectly causing up to ninety percent of all workplace accidents that are seen throughout the United States. Unplanned downtime can be another area that is frequently caused by human error (in very nearly twenty five percent of all cases), particularly in the manufacturing world. This unplanned downtime reduces employee productivity by quite a bit for the day – sometimes by quite a lot – and can in this way lose the company a considerable amount of money, something that should not, of course, be looked at lightly.

But why is human error so frequent in the workplaces of the United States, spanning industries and areas of expertise? For one, as mentioned above, to err is to be human. There’s simply no getting around it. But a lack of communication in the workforce is another definable and prevalent problem, and can lead to a great number of errors simply because employees did not know better. In fact, when leaving a meeting it is not unlikely for more than half – up to more than forty five, in fact – of all of the employees to feel unclear about what they are supposed to do next. And this lack of sufficient communication throughout the workplace makes up the number one complaint of employees all throughout the country. Too much work is another great problem in the workforce of the United States, with more than eighty percent of all employees feeling that, at some point or another, they have been given more work than they are easily able to handle. This intense workload can lead to intense stress, and stress has been known to reduce productivity for more than fifty percent of all employees here in the United States, let alone in other countries all throughout the world.

Fortunately, human error can be reduced through the implementation of human error prevention training. Human error prevention training can be hugely important in reducing human error, and human error prevention training can be implemented at all levels. Bosses should also be a part of human error prevention training, as they can help to implement some of the strategies that they will learn in this human error prevention training. Human error prevention training is likely to lead to the learning of human error production tools, as well as lowered rates of things like cognitive load failures as well as attention failures and memory failures. Human error prevention training should be conducted before an employee even begins on the job, as this will help to prevent errors before they can ever happen in the first place. On top of this, such human error prevention training should be reviewed over the course of any person’s employment, keeping them as fresh and on top of things as they can possibly be in their jobs.