If Training Didn’t Work the First Five Times…

POV: You’re reviewing the corrective actions from the last 10 incidents.

You start reading.
Incident #1: Retrain the employee.
Okay.

Incident #2: Retrain the employee.
Hmm.

Incident #3: Retrain the employee.
Interesting.

Incident #4: Retrain the employee.
At this point, you start wondering if your organization has accidentally hired the world’s least trainable workforce.

Then you get to Incident #5.
Retrain the employee. You stare at the screen.

Maybe the employee isn’t the problem. Maybe… the system is. Because if the same type of error keeps happening, simply telling people to “do better” probably isn’t going to prevent the next incident.

People make mistakes. That’s not exactly breaking news.

The real question is:
Why was the mistake possible in the first place?

• Was the procedure clear and usable?
• Was the task designed to make the correct action obvious?
• Was the person given the right information at the right time?
• Were there competing priorities or time pressures?
• Was the equipment difficult to operate?
• Were expectations clear?

And perhaps most importantly:
What safeguards were supposed to catch the error before it became an incident?

That’s where a good root cause analysis goes deeper. Instead of asking, “Who made the mistake?”, we start asking, “What conditions allowed this mistake to happen, and why didn’t our systems prevent it from causing harm?”

Because retraining the employee might be part of the solution. But if it’s the solution every single time, it might be a pretty good sign that we’re treating symptoms instead of addressing root causes.

So, the next time you’re reviewing a list of corrective actions and see:

• Retrain the employee.
• Retrain the employee.
• Retrain the employee.

Stop.

Ask a few more questions. Your employees might appreciate it. And your incident rate might, too.

Ready to go deeper?

In the 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course, you’ll learn a systematic process for investigating incidents, identifying the root causes behind human performance and equipment problems, and developing corrective actions that address what actually allowed the incident to happen.

Because the goal isn’t to find someone to retrain. It’s to prevent the incident from happening again.

Join us for a 2-Day TapRooT® Root Cause Analysis Course and learn how to find and fix the real causes of repeat problems.