How To Discover Who Makes The Mistakes
What are the most common mistakes of employees? How frequently are these mistakes repeated? What is their cost in terms of goodwill and waste? These are three questions every business man should ask himself.
When he sets about answering them he discovers some astonishing facts. For instance, one merchant found that among twenty-five hundred employees average of twelve thousand errors were being made every month.
He found that the result from the point of view of customers was a daily grist of two hundred complaints. The errors were of every conceivable kind, from the illegible writing of a salesgirl to an overcharge by a bookkeeper. He listed about three hundred and seventy-five kinds, all told. Every one of these errors caused delay, trouble and dissatisfaction somewhere down the line.
Errors are Due to Carelessness
His problem, therefore, was: How to at least approximate the ideal —an errorless force of employees? The merchant realized that it was impossible to eliminate all errors. But he believed that in many cases the mistakes were merely due to neglect or carelessness, and that they would not have happened had the employee definitely kept in mind a goal of accuracy.
To furnish such a goal, he established a system which reduced errors to less than one for each employee, as against about five per employee before.
How the Merchant Went About It
First of all he listed, by departments, the errors that a six-month study told him were made in those departments. The various errors were classified, and each error was given a number. Then he had printed lists made, on which is indicated the date, the number of the employee at fault, and, along the left, a column in which a check mark against the particular error which the employee has made.
The employee at fault is required to sign the slip, thus acknowledging the mistake and assuring an accurate record. The policy reason for this is, of course, the fact that, when the employee’s error is called to his attention in this way, he is likely to be strictly on his guard against slipping up in the same way again and making the same mistake twice.
In the office a careful record of these error slips is kept. For each employee there is an envelope in which slips charged against employees are filed.
Rewarding Errorless Employees
Merely keeping these records would probably help but little, were it not for the fact that the merchant offers an incentive to employees to secure errorless records. Each month those who have not had an error checked against them, received what is termed an “honor card.”
This states that the employee has been most proficient in his work, and is therefore entitled to a half days’ vacation at the firm’s expense.
Penalty for Habitual Carelessness
Plans were also made to handle employees whose errors are more numerous than they should be. Each month a list is made of the one hundred workers who have the largest number of errors posted against them.
These employees are called into conference. Anyone who is in this class month after month is in serious danger of discharge under the conditions and it is not difficult to establish the justification for a discharge under the conditions. One special point of interest is the fact that tardiness is counted an error.
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