It’s human nature to make mistakes from time to time. While these errors may not always have major effects on our personal lives, mistakes at the workplace can lead to profit loss and even safety issues. Having a human factors plan in place ensures that business runs smoothly even when an employee makes a mistake.
The term “human factors” refers to every part of how employees interact with the environment, equipment, and processes of their workplace. A human factors plan clearly lays out the correct methods for doing one’s job and addresses what happens if these duties are not performed correctly.
A human factors plan also ensures that employees are only required to do tasks that they can realistically perform. Expecting an employee to handle more than their fair share of work, whether it’s due to understaffing or too many straight hours of labor, only leads to disaster in the long run.
Implementing an effective human factors plan includes properly training an employee on using equipment, interacting with other people at the workplace, and knowing when to ask for help with a task. And in the event that something goes wrong, it’s important to discuss how things can be done differently in the future to avoid the same problem happening again.
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