Customize Consent Preferences

We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions. You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below.

The cookies that are categorized as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site. ... 

Always Active

Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

No cookies to display.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

No cookies to display.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

No cookies to display.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

No cookies to display.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

No cookies to display.

January 27, 2025 | Barb Carr

Skill-based Errors

skill-based errors

Last week, I posted an overview of the Skills, Rules, Knowledge (SRK) Model developed by Jens Rasmussen, and the Generic Error-Modelling System (GEMS) developed by James Reason. Today, I’m focusing on skill-based errors. Understanding these models can improve our knowledge of how workers make mistakes.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, we often think of mistakes as character flaws, but these research models reveal that workers will make mistakes due to normal thought processes. If you frequently try to correct the “character” of your workers by telling them to “try harder,” “concentrate,” “think before you act,” learn about how you can stop human error more effectively.

What are Skill-based Errors?

Skill-based errors were classified by Reason as slips and lapses. Slips are when someone does something but it is not what they intended to do. Lapses are when we simply forget.

In our 5-Day TapRooT® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader Training, we go into more detail discussing short-term and long-term memory, and how this affects the performance of our workers.

Most workers want to do their jobs as assigned but work environments are full of interruptions, workload demands are often high, and fatigue and stress cause issues. Our memories do not always serve us well.

There is variability in human performance on any given day due to these factors and more. Instead of focusing on a worker’s errors and blaming the worker for failures of memory or lack of attention, one thing we can do is look into the factors that are making it easy for workers to make errors.

Examples of Skill-based Errors (Slips and Lapses)

Again, a lapse is a failure of memory. Essentially a lapse is “I forgot what I was doing or what I was going to do.” Forgetting to restore normal valve settings after maintenance is a lapse.

Slips are errors where the intention is correct, but there is a failure of execution. A slip is, “I knew what I was doing or going to do, I just did it wrong, (or didn’t do it).” Typing with the caps lock turned on your keyboard when you want lowercase is a slip. (Keyboarding is a learned, skill-based task for many people. The worker could do the task without really thinking about it, but did it wrong.)

Slips and errors often happen because the worker was interrupted during the task.

errors

Are Skill-Based Errors Common?

Skill-based errors are extremely common. They can happen when:

• the worker knows how to perform the task.
• the worker has hundreds of hours of experience.
• the worker is doing very simple tasks (drinking coffee).

These errors happen to our most trained, competent, dedicated workers. At this point, you may be thinking about some slips and lapses of your own!

A TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis investigation can identify skill-based errors to analyze for root causes. Then, you can develop corrective actions to make them less likely to occur.

Learn about our Stopping Human Error Course

Learn tried and true strategies as well as how to design a human performance improvement program.

Join me next week

In next week’s post, I’ll focus on how to practically apply knowledge about these models to rule-based errors. If you missed last week’s post overviewing the Skills, Rules, Knowledge (SRK) Model developed by Jens Rasmussen, and the Generic Error-Modelling System (GEMS) developed by James Reason, read it here.

References for this Series

Stopping Human Error

Skills, Rules, and Knowledge: Signals, Signs and Symbols and other Distinctions in Human Performance Models

Categories
Human Performance, Operational Excellence
-->
Show Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *