In twenty years as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry – I've learnt that - as in all industries - huge sums of money are lost through mistakes every year. And where does the finger most often point to? “Human error.”

Human error is often given as the real reason between such diverse problems as product recalls, customer complaints and poor audit findings. In many cases, this is often just a convenient excuse that serves to mask the real problems that led to the error in the first place.

Fortunately, you can avoid or minimise such occasions through the application of some simple rules. These apply across all industries and activities.

Understanding the Psychology of “Human Error”
Why do men and women differ in their approach to tasks and the problems they encounter? Why is that we are sometimes ‘blind’ to problems? What is it that causes us to make assumptions that turn out to be wrong?

Many problems lie with boring tasks where attention naturally wanders. How can you alleviate these tasks to make them more interesting – can any of it be automated? One easy solution is to rotate boring jobs between people to avoid mental fatique setting in.

Adopt a positive ‘blame-free’ attitude to mistakes.
Every mistake is a free lesson on what not to do! So long as you don’t repeat the mistake. Of course, if people aren’t prepared to share the mistakes they make then you may never know that they’re happening. And if Person A can’t tell Person B, then there is nothing to stop Person B repeating the error at great cost to you.

By encouraging the open reporting of mistakes you can develop systems to train people in the avoidance of the problems and actually reduce errors over time.

Drive out Complexity
The more complicated your systems are, the more opportunities are created for error to arise. My industry – pharamceuticals – excels at overcomplicating even very simple processes. In a drive to make things fail-safe, the processes actually become too complicated to be carried out easily, actually increasing the level of error.

Take the time to study your processes and review changes you’ve made over the years. Chances are you’ll be able to weed out a surprising amount of uneccessary work – meaning greater efficiency and less opportunity to make mistakes.

Design systems with people in mind
If you have to work with procedures or software then it’s design should start not with the process, but the goals of the people who have to carry it out. Involve the people who will be doing the work at the outset and make sure their voices are heard during the design period and you’ll create a tool that’s as close as possible to the users’ model of what they need. The result? Less errors from a simpler, more intuitive system.

Make people responsible and accountable
With ownership and accountability come pride, responsibility and discipline. If people are managed from ‘on high’ by people who don’t actually have to do the work themselves, it becomes easy for them to shift the blame upstairs when things go wrong. By putting trust in them, you give them in-built reasons to do a good job and people’s own willingness to excel shouldn’t be doubted.

So these are some of the lessons I’ve learnt from 20 odd years in the pharmaceutical industry. But these lessons cut across disciplines and areas of specialim. You can learn a lot by putting people back at the core of your business and stepping away from the obsessions with systems and processes.