We’re all human, so that also means that we oftentimes make mistakes; it’s completely normal, but that doesn’t give people an excuse to continually make those mistakes, especially not the same mistakes. But as common as mistakes are, they differ in the severity of the consequences people suffer as a result of those mistakes, especially when it comes to your job.
That’s not saying you have to be a perfectionist at your job, although some people hold themselves accountable to perform at a perfectionist level, it’s not required. For the most part, jobs just want you to be knowledgeable in your work responsibilities and be able to perform with minimal supervision and considerable skill.
Nobody intentionally comes to work to be a terrible employee. A lot of times, human error is either due to a lack of proper training for employees or not utilizing technology as a solution for accuracy… both are results of poor decision-making from upper management.
Lack of Proper Training For Employees
From this perspective, a lot of businesses don’t have proper training programs in place to ensure their employees are doing their jobs with confidence and accuracy. So how is it that an employee can be reprimanded for errors when they weren’t properly trained?
Unfortunately, it happens all the time. But in the same token, it’s also up to employees to let their supervisors know when they don’t understand something so that additional training can be provided. Everybody has different learning speeds and employers need to cater to that in order to build and retain loyal and happy employees.
Not Utilizing Technology For Accuracy Solutions
When companies don’t use technology as a solution for accuracy, it’s typically because they’re trying to be “cost-effective” or not making adjustments to the budget to allow for it. What businesses don’t realize is that certain technologies might be costly on the front-end but they’ll end up making that money back plus more in the long run.
All industries benefit from technology. Just look at the pharmaceutical and engineering industries. If engineers weren’t able to rely on companies like BDTronic for accurate dispensing solutions, human errors in measurements would put lots of companies out of business.
The same could be said with banks and their money counting machines… If it were left up to bank tellers to single-handedly count all the money from financial transactions on their own, there would be all kinds of discrepancies simply from errors in math.
As far as utilizing technology, there’s also the consideration that some companies actually do implement technology but the employees aren’t as receptive to it because they don’t understand it. There was even an economic crisis where people feared losing their jobs to robots, famously known as the Rise of the Robots.
The utilization was totally misconstrued. Yes, technology was going to replace a lot of jobs in certain industries, and it already has but not like people thought. According to bbc.com, by the year 2030, 20 million manufacturing jobs could be run by robots.
But what a lot of those alarming headlines forgot to mention was that those robots still needed to be run by humans, leaving people with their same jobs… the robots just help them do their job more efficiently and accurately. Just look at how Toyota is using Human Support Robots.
How Technology is Leading the Way For Work Accuracy
Procedural Accuracy
Mistakes in procedures are one of the top reasons why businesses turn to technology to reduce human errors. Procedures are the act of following directions in a specific order. A lot of times, when procedural mistakes are made, it’s due to directions being given poorly or the directions aren’t completely understood. Technology like robots and various operating systems eliminate that human error factor.
Work Overload
The good thing about technology is that it doesn’t get tired or overworked, except for those few occasions when you may need to give your computer a reset or a boost. With human workers, there’s the potential for stress and fatigue due to being overworked. Sometimes you might even need a personal day just to give yourself a mental break from everything your job requires.
By experiencing physical and mental wear and tear on your body, it leads to careless mistakes. Depending on the type of industry you’re in, it can lead to severe consequences. With most technologies, there are no days off, and those machines performing the work of employees won’t make the same mistakes as humans.
With most machines, the workers typically will input certain information or a specific formula, and once that information is entered, the machine will do all the work that the worker typically would do, and it would be done with no errors. Regardless of how hard of a worker you are or the fact that you don’t “need” a break, people still need to give themselves a break, and technology is here to do just that… That’s why technology is something that shouldn’t be feared but embraced.