Whether it’s accidental file deletion or clicking on a suspicious link, some of our seemingly insignificant actions can lead to major consequences. As humans, we make mistakes & errors all the time.
However, if you better understand how these errors occur, you’ll have a better chance of avoiding them. Whether you’re a business owner or an employee, digging into the external factors that lead to human error can be very helpful.
What leads to human error?
A research report conducted by Tessian and Stanford University shows that 52% of people clicked on a phishing email after mistakenly assuming it to be from an authentic source. Interestingly enough, the report also shows that over 50% of employees made such mistakes when they were tired, distracted, or stressed. Let’s dig into that.
Burnout and Fatigue
If you are tired or feeling burned out, your cognitive functions will start to deteriorate. You will process information at a slower pace, experience a lapse in memory, and lack of awareness overall.
A report from the Future Forum shows that two out of every five U.S. workers state that they are burned out.
This is due to several reasons: limited schedule flexibility, long working hours, short deadlines, and more. Performing under such conditions leads to physical and mental exhaustion, affecting our performance and decision-making ability.
When employees are mentally exhausted, they can struggle to identify which sort of data is critical and which isn’t. This increases the likelihood of deleting or mishandling important files, impacting the company’s operations and data integrity.
Distraction
Multitasking is a major buzzword these days, and while it can make you productive in some cases, the adverse effect is a loss of focus. We’re not designed to switch from task to task in a snap, and doing so actually lowers our productivity at times. Rather than juggling multiple things at once, it’s important to focus on the more important details first.
Of course, distraction doesn’t stem from just multitasking. Constant notifications, a noisy environment, and the stress of looming deadlines can also divert attention and increase the likelihood of errors.
Due to distractions, employees are likely to circumvent standard processes. For instance, to avoid slow or pokey remote desktop connections, employees may save important data locally on their desktops or even move corporate data onto personal devices.
These workarounds can lead to data cracks where sensitive information is at a greater risk of being misplaced, lost, or even exposed to unauthorized access.
Stress
According to WebMD, 40% of US workers experience office stress regularly. Factors include too many responsibilities at work, unhealthy hours, poor management, unfair treatment, or even more serious issues, such as discrimination.
When people are stressed, mistakes are more likely to occur. The problem is that those mistakes can compound themselves. For example, a stressed worker might mismanage a task, adding even more to their already intensive workload. This creates a vicious cycle that adds even more strain on the mind.
Instead of carefully reviewing your work or backing up important files, a stressed employee might rush through tasks just to keep up with their employer’s demands. They may also react emotionally to setbacks, such as slow computers or complex tasks.
In moments of stress and frustration, a person might take hasty actions, such as deleting files in anger or impatience. These impulse responses can exacerbate issues and lead to accidental data loss or corruption.
Lack of knowledge and training
If your organization has a healthy work culture, you know that employees are not always to blame. Improper or unorganized communication among the team can lead to significant human error.
An employee that has not been walked through all the crucial steps will make mistakes. In an SHRM survey, 84% of workers blame bad management for unnecessary stress and added work.
This lack of knowledge can lead employees to save their work in progress to non-approved locations, such as the desktop, a local hard drive, or a personal device. These locations often lack safeguards of secure systems, meaning accidental deletion or overwriting can lead to irretrievable data loss.
To mitigate these risks, providing comprehensive training on data storage protocols and maintaining clear communication is important.
How to deal with human error?
Even with the best preventative measures, human errors will still occur. Most operating systems have safeguards in place and incorporate a two-step process to confirm data deletion. For example, the Recycle Bin will ask you to confirm before permanently deleting a file. Despite that, these simple messages are easy to overlook.
Unfortunately, deleting critical data is easy if it falls into the wrong hands. This can cause major setbacks for an organization, but there are tools out there that can aid recovery and minimize the damage. Let’s explore a few of these options:
Don’t Risk Permanent Data Loss Due to Human Error
Data loss is a typical consequence of human error which is why having proper data recovery software in place becomes critical. With Stellar Data Recovery software, you can easily recover your deleted data from any storage device, including hard drives, SD cards, USB drives, and more.
The software is easy to use and driven by smart algorithms that help recover files lost due to deletion, malware, corruption, or drive formatting. Stellar Data Recovery is free, but you can also find many tools catered towards businesses.
Integrating tools into error management practices
Getting yourself the right tools to deal with human error is a great start, but you should also have a broader strategy that encourages you or your employees to deal with mistakes as they arise. This enhances your resilience to problems so they’re less of a headache. Here are some strategies to implement:
- Schedule automatic backups for essential files and media to minimize the risk of permanent data loss. Regularly updating these backups ensures that recent changes are protected.
- Develop clear documentation outlining the steps to take when data loss occurs. This ensures that all employees know how to act swiftly and effectively in the event of an error.
- Encourage employees to view mistakes as opportunities for learning rather than failures. With the right tools in hand, they can focus on rectifying errors rather than being paralyzed by the fear of making them.
How to minimize human error?
Other than what we’ve discussed so far, there’s a lot more that contributes to human error. Problems at home, a lack of sleep, mental health issues, and intoxication, just to name a few. We’ve already discussed how to deal with human errors in the section above, but if you want to reduce them in the first place, here are a few key points to remember:
- Encourage flexible work schedules, promote adequate breaks, and set realistic deadlines to reduce exhaustion and burnout, and improve productivity.
- Limit multitasking by prioritizing tasks, minimizing external distractions, and creating focused work environments to reduce errors.
- Be wary of workload imbalances, improve management practices, and foster pen communications to prevent stress and its effects on performance.
- Implement comprehensive training programs and ensure clear, organized communication across teams to prevent knowledge gaps and mismanagement.
Conclusion
Human error is inevitable in our lives, and understanding the causes and implementing strategies to mitigate its effects can greatly reduce the impact. By addressing factors, such as fatigue, distractions, and miscommunications, many of these errors are easy to avoid. Of course, it’s hard to be at your best at all times.
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