Does a team that reports more errors perform worse?
In SHR’s “Team Performance” programme, handling errors raises a precise management question: how can we distinguish deteriorating work from improving reporting? Confusing the two can lead management to penalise transparency rather than correct failures.
What the literature establishes
Amy Edmondson (1996, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science) examines the detection and correction of errors in hospital teams. Her work shows why recorded errors are not a transparent measure of work quality: their visibility also depends on the team context in which they are identified and discussed. Comparing teams solely on their reports therefore conflates the occurrence of errors with their detection.
The mechanism: managing errors, not just preventing them
Cathy van Dyck, Michael Frese, Markus Baer and Sabine Sonnentag (2005, Journal of Applied Psychology) find a positive association between error management culture and performance in two organisational studies. This culture includes communication about errors, rapid detection and correction, and learning from what happened. The proposed mechanism is not about accepting less rigorous work, but about limiting an error’s consequences and preventing its recurrence.
The premature conclusion
It is tempting to conclude that a team reporting more errors must be functioning better. That would simply replace one shortcut with another: an increase may reflect better reporting, more complex work or genuine deterioration. The number of reports, the severity of consequences and the recurrence of failures need to be distinguished. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
Hospital research and associations observed at organisational level do not demonstrate that a reporting system will, by itself, improve every team’s performance. Organisational findings do not automatically transfer to individual teams, and confidentiality or compliance requirements sometimes restrict case sharing. Everyday practice introduces a further bias when managers demand transparency while assessing employees on the absence of reported errors.
A practical check in Lugano
As part of the “Team Performance” programme, SHR can propose a four-week test for an Italian-speaking team in Lugano: track a specific category of errors and check whether corrections hold over time. Depending on the business — banking, fashion, trading or a family-owned SME — this might involve files returned for missing information, order discrepancies or shipping documents requiring revision, without circulating confidential data. The tracking sheet distinguishes reports, the volume of cases processed and the proportion of cases showing the same error again after a correction has been announced, using a stable definition and documentary checks. An increase in reporting accompanied by a decline in recurrence would be consistent with improved error management, without on its own establishing a causal effect of the programme. To go further: explore the Team Performance training in Lugano in the canton of Ticino, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Team Performance in Lugano
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