Human error is inevitable, but it can also have serious consequences for your emergency management plan. Whether it is caused by lack of training, poor communication, fatigue, stress, or negligence, human error can compromise your response, recovery, and resilience. How can you account for human error in your contingency plan and reduce its impact? Here are some tips to help you.
In order to account for human error, the first step is to identify where and how it can occur in your contingency plan. Risk analysis, scenario planning, after-action reviews, or feedback surveys are some of the methods you can use to assess the possible causes and effects of human error. When doing so, ask yourself questions such as what are the most critical tasks and decisions in your plan, who is responsible for performing or overseeing them, what are the skills, knowledge, and resources required for them, and what are the potential errors or oversights that could happen. Furthermore, consider how these errors would affect your plan objectives, outcomes, and stakeholders. By identifying potential sources of error, you can prioritize the areas that need more attention and improvement.
There the hobbits sat under the cover of the thorny bush, while the drear light of Mordor faded slowly into a deep and starless night; and Sam spoke into Frodo’s ear all that he could find words for of Gollum’s treacherous attack, the horror of Shelob, and his own adventures with the orcs. When he had finished, Frodo said nothing but took Sam’s hand and pressed it. At length he stirred. ‘Well, I suppose we must be going on again,’ he said. ‘I wonder how long it will be before we really are caught and all the toiling and the slinking will be over, and in vain.’ He stood up. ‘It’s dark, and we cannot use the Lady’s glass. Keep it safe for me, Sam.
In my experience, human errors usually come from unexpected sources and unexpected stakeholders. We have the well trained core team, with high competence and experienced, well-trained persons; but human errors may come from some people and stakeholders in minority, who we are not be awared and have not performed trains or calculated in our continengy plans; for example the new comers staffs or the new suppliers. It's very hard to control all sources of risks, and we may accept some low risk sources; and focus on the most crititcal tasks. But in case of risk events, for example the Covid-19, sometimes human error can cause to human loss. Besides that, human errors include the fraud and intended actions, which are very hard to control!
A comprehensive analysis of potential sources of error is crucial to identify weaknesses in our emergency plan. This means considering both human and technical aspects. We need to examine where human decisions or actions could lead to errors, whether due to stress, lack of training, or misinterpretation of information. A multidisciplinary team can help bring different perspectives and comprehensively identify potential sources of error.
The second step to account for human error is to implement measures that can prevent or correct it in your contingency plan. Strategies such as training, standardization, automation, supervision, or backup systems can be used to reduce the likelihood or severity of human error. To do this, you should provide regular and relevant training to staff and partners on plan procedures, roles, and expectations; establish clear and consistent standards, guidelines, and protocols for plan activities, processes, and outputs; use technology, tools, or software to automate or simplify plan tasks; monitor and evaluate plan performance and compliance; and create contingency or backup plans for scenarios where human error could cause major disruptions or failures. This way, you can ensure the reliability and effectiveness of your contingency plan.
In my opinion, to set up a contingency plan for a contingency plan in case of disruptions or failures (of the main contingency plan) is not a good idea, because the main contigency plan itself consumes a lot of resoures (time, human resoures and money). But I totally agree with the solution to automate the tasks, so we can reduce the actions which have to be done manually by human. For example, when we active the Call-Tree solution (a contact tree to active in case of the emergency plan is actived), we can use the automatical phones, email or messages systems, instead of manual calls by human. Besides that, we can try to automate the daily-work, so that in case of emergency, we can reduce the human required actions in the contigency plan.
After potential sources of error have been identified, it's crucial to implement effective preventive and corrective measures. This may involve training and development programs for employees to strengthen their skills and awareness. Additionally, clear procedures and protocols should be established to standardize how to deal with potential errors. Integrating technology, such as automated monitoring systems, can also help minimize human errors and detect them early.
The third step to account for human error is to foster a culture of learning and improvement in your contingency plan. You can use communication, collaboration, recognition, or innovation to encourage and enable your staff and partners to learn from their errors and improve their practices. For instance, you can communicate openly and transparently about your plan goals, challenges, and results, and solicit feedback from your staff and partners. Additionally, collaborate and coordinate with them on implementation, evaluation, and improvement of your plan. Moreover, recognize and reward your staff and partners for their achievements, contributions, and improvements in your plan. Lastly, innovate and experiment with new ideas, methods, or solutions to address any plan problems or gaps. By fostering a culture of learning and improvement, you can motivate and empower your staff and partners to overcome human error and enhance your contingency plan.
In my experience, the more effective solutions are punishments and top management activities. To perform an exercise, it is expensive in terms of time, money and human. We can not reward someone because he or she has followed the plan, especially escape plan - it is his or her duty and responsibility with his or her life; and the community regulations. I have seen many people stay and continue working during the fire escape plan; because they are very familiar with the annual exercies, and do not be punished for their actions. Second, the top management actitivies is very important to be followed by employees; and should be consider as core human error; because top management usually use his or her rights to violate the emergency plan!
An open and learning-oriented organizational culture is crucial for effectively addressing human error. Employees should be encouraged to report errors and learn from them rather than covering them up or avoiding them. Regular debriefings of emergencies and exercises provide opportunities for reflection and identifying areas for improvement. Additionally, successes in error prevention and correction should be recognized and rewarded to maintain motivation for continuous improvement.
We often evaluate emergency and contingency plans based on foreseeable risks, but sometimes we fail to consider the risk and/or complexity of the contingency plan itself. Ensure you build clear and straightforward response actions and mitigations in any management process, otherwise you may be introducing a higher propensity of failure in plan execution.
Continuously reviewing and updating the emergency plan to respond to new insights and changing threats. Incorporating feedback from employees, customers, and other relevant stakeholders to consider different perspectives and continuously improve the emergency plan. Considering external resources and partnerships to strengthen responsiveness in emergencies and be better prepared for unforeseen events.
Multiple role employees monitoring of contingency execution will prevent human errors Adequate automation system monitoring will eliminate human errors Proper qualified team engagement will eliminate human errors Periodical training and assessment will eliminate human earrors
It is imperative that emergency management agencies utilize project management methodologies. There are plenty of software applications that can be added to the first responders tool belt. These apps are perfect for addressing the "what ifs" during timeline estimation constructing. Human error is something that is always going to happen. Too many times I see managers falling into the "we've always done it this way" mentality which serves no good purpose other than to document historic events. Get with the times and introduce new advancements from other industries into your emergency management quiver to stay ahead of the game.