Error Management - reduce the incidence of errors within your organisation with our training programmes.

Human error is ubiquitous and inevitable.

However, if we can reduce errors we will:

Improve Performance
Improve Customer Satisfaction
Reduce Costs

If error is inevitable, then we need a set of error countermeasures with three lines of defence.

The first, naturally, is the avoidance of error.
The second is trapping incipient errors before they are committed.
The third and last is mitigating the consequences of those errors which occur and are not trapped.

So what is Error Management?

By error management we mean using all available data to understand the causes of errors and taking appropriate actions, including changing policy, procedures, and special training, to reduce the incidence of error and to minimise the consequences of those errors that do occur.

It is a cognitive approach to error within an organisation. It is a system whereby an acceptance of the fact that we will make mistakes is recognised, and that we will therefore attempt to locate the hazards and threats in order to eradicate them before the error is made.

Error management recognises the inevitability of error and adopts a non-punitive stance toward inadvertent error. (Of course, this does not imply that any organization should accept wilful violation of its rules or procedures.)

A study of more than 100 companies in the UK conducted by Vanson Bourne found that many are heading towards a catalogue of costly and unmanaged business errors.¹

The research confirmed that the key driver for error management is customer satisfaction, and 40 percent believed that their customers felt the impact first, and that compliance was only a minor issue in comparison.

Only 30 percent of companies surveyed actually considered error management to be a major problem, indicating that the true cost of managing the errors in many organisations is hidden, and therefore ignored.

¹ Vanson Bourne. "Vitria OmniBoss Report." UK, October 31, 2005.