The Person Approach to Human Error

The traditional approach for human error in organisations is known as the person approach, which focuses upon unsafe acts, and the procedural violations of people on the coal face of the organisation. These unsafe acts occur due to the abnormal thought processes such as forgetfulness, daydreaming, lack of motivation, carelessness and recklessness (Reason, 2000, p. 768).

Countermeasures within the person approach to human error are mainly behavioural. For example: posters that work on fear, writing more procedures and policies, discipline, threatening litigation, over managing performance, labelling or shaming. As Reason conveys in his research:

“Blaming individuals is emotionally more satisfying than targeting institutions.... If something goes wrong, it seems obvious that an individual (or group of individuals) must have been responsible.” (Reason, 2000, p. 768)

As can be seen, the person approach to error management has significant deficiencies. Reason states that unsafe acts or errors are bound to happen within any organisation, however, many are not. Interestingly, Reason goes on to say, that 90% of quality lapses in both aviation and health care were not the fault of any individual (Reason, 2000, p. 768).

Reason, J. (2000). Human Error: Models and Management. British Medical Journal , 320, 768-770.

Accident Proneness Myth or Reality

Dekker in his text “The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error” states:

“Reactions to failure focus firstly and predominantly on those people who were closest to producing or potentially avoiding the mishap. It is easy to see these people as the engine of action. If it were not for them, the trouble would not have occurred.”

This statement by Dekker is intriguing, as it insinuates that people generally go out of their way to cause problems for an organisation. Could this be true? This kind of statement is easy to make, considering what one knows after-the-fact, it gives the impression that accidents are preventable. However, under every simple assumption about error, there is a much deeper more complex story. It is much easier to see the error as something that is local, or that is merely a problem of a few individuals, than change our beliefs about the system that made the event possible.

People generally want to do the right thing, and do a good job, as their livelihoods are on the line. The highlighting of errors made by well meaning people does not explain why the error occurred, or why they did what they did. Many professionals have a hard time coming to grips with human error; they experience fear, guilt, anger, embarrassment and humiliation when an error has occurred. They have difficulty in reporting errors because of litigation, and the feeling of incompetence. To add to this, there is the labelling of people that make an error as the “bad apples”. The Bad Apple Theory asserts the assumption that Systems that are complex would be fine if it were not for the unpredictable behaviour of some unreliable people or “bad apples”. Consequently, when an error occurs, managers will inspect and remove any “bad apple” from the system. However, removing the so called “bad apples” without at first discovering the flaws within the system is a formula for failure. Therefore, it is essential that a systems approach that focuses on the whole and not just the individual is implemented for the management and prevention of errors.