5 Tips to Avoiding Human Error Disasters

You’ve heard it countless times, “I’m only human.” While it’s normal for people to make mistakes, human error is never welcomed at work. More often than not, it isn’t possible for any company to completely eliminate all slops and mishaps made by staff, but there are things businesses can do to help reduce the quantity and impact of errors in daily operations. For most technology service providers, it could be a matter of client retention and your company’s reputation.

Unfortunately, human error isn’t a rare occurrence. Example: Amazon’s server outage in 2017 that was due to a typo by one of its employees. While human error is the most common culprit of data center issues, it’s also the most preventable. At TSP, we pride ourselves on creating custom, flexible and flawlessly executed IT solutions for every customer. A disaster recovery plan is an excellent tool in preventing human error.

Here are 5 tips to help eliminate the effects of human error on your business.

TRAIN
A company can only be as strong as its weakest link, and that weak link shouldn’t be your employees. Training isn’t important — it’s vital. Tailoring the training experience to each employee and educating them on their job-specific roles helps improve overall workplace competency and reduce human error. This is especially important when training employees working with critical data and technology.

More often than not, the biggest obstacle companies face when training employees is the cost and time allocated to training. However, the ROI to training is significant when it leads to preventing data loss and downtime.

LIMIT ACCESS
A company’s data is its crown jewel and a potential threat if it gets in the wrong hands. Protecting your data by carefully restricting access is crucial. Proprietary data and technology should only be accessed by a select number of trusted, well-trained employees.

DEVELOP A RECOVERY PLAN
Believe it or not, 74 percent of businesses don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place. One of the most important things for any company is to ensure to continuity of operation in the event of a crisis. Developing a strong disaster recovery plan can help ensure that all of your employees are on the same page when it comes to preventing human error. Make sure that the employees dealing with critical data and information also thoroughly understand the disaster recovery plan.

TEST YOUR DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN
Once you’ve established a disaster recovery plan, it’s important to test it to make sure it’s bulletproof. To ensure its effectiveness, have employees run through simulated human error disasters. Conducting a real-life simulation for employee training purposes will allow your employees to understand the importance of having error-free work, while also knowing there’s a strong safety net in case of a slip up.

HOLD FREQUENT REFRESHER COURSES
Reducing human error is a group effort — it’s not enough to hope that employees retain the information after one practice round. Consistently communicating the policies and best practices to employees will in turn help create a more conscientious workplace.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to human error is that if the concerns aren't addressed, the likelihood of error will increase. Make sure to constantly remind your employees of the disaster recovery plan and include this in your onboard of new employees.

At the end of the day, your employees are human — mistakes are inevitable. However, mistakes can be costly depending on the size of the error. Following these 5 tips can help you and your company avoid human error.