can I get fired for this? how bad is it?

[Snowowls]

I work in a company where I enter data manually into a system. I do about 8000-10000 entries per annum (it's about usage of a certain product which is linked to invoice creation). I was informed last week that in the last few months, 3 entries were incorrectly entered (though the have been corrected after the customer complained), all invoices had been corrected. I have been told that is is an unacceptable standard of working and I am having an urgent meeting with my line manager about it next Monday to discuss my poor performance. I have been in my job for 5 years but I worry I will let go. There were innocent mistakes. Not sure how they happened, just human nature. It's the first time in 5 years such a mistake has been flagged to but I am absolutely terrified as I have now a (disciplinary?) meeting about it. Any advice on how to respond? I am not in a union.

Exactly this. You can't target humans for zero error and you can't even achieve zero errors with data quality software.

Do not resign. And don't be bullied into thinking you are bad at your job. Assuming you are a perm or FTC member of staff you have protections and ACAS can guid you further.

@Snowowls I think this the study that is often cited when discussing data entry errors.

Single entry with visual checking, which I assume is what you're doing, resulted in an average of 10.39 errors in the entry of 1260 values, or around 0.8% error rate. The figures commonly quote are for 1%-5% error. There is literally no human being who could type in 10,000 numbers and make no errors.

Exactly. Unless your mistakes could literally kill people, it's ridiculous.

Doesn't sound like it be a sackable error but to look at it from their side. You actually made 3 errors in 3 months, so that is 3 in 3000 and spread out so not just 1 bad day.

They might now be thinking you are looking at making another 9 errors this year and therefore want to see if there is any change in your circumstances.

Is this your whole job? 10000 entries on the basis of 37 hour weeks and working 48 weeks is still less than 6 per hour. No idea what else is involved but 10 minutes per entry is not necessarily high speed data entry.

Years ago I worked in Accounts Payable for a large building society. We processed all the bills for each branch and whilst a few errors were expected and accepted that was processing around 200-250 invoices per shift.

Op, this is no way to live.

Nobody can be expected to make ZERO errors ever - that is not a realistic target. I’m 100% certain that every one of their staff members will have made an occasional error. Stand your ground - you’ve done nothing wrong except for being a human not a robot.

They may just be trying to push you out. If that's not the case then I would hope for a first reporting of making errors that it'd be a warning.

However, please don't rock up to the meeting saying "I don't know how this happened". It's not helpful and doesn't paint your accuracy/self awareness in any better light. If at all possible I would go with a plan/solution in place to avoid errors in future - an extra check in place etc. at least then you're not just focusing on the issue but how to avoid it in future. If you can make the mistake, anyone can. We're only human.

Have you actually rang ACAS?

@Snowowls unless there is someone checking before the next stage it is ridiculous of them to expect perfection. Humans are not computers. That is why Flight Attendants do cross checks. You need to be able to see the invoice total and the like and there needs to be some macro that checks what is normal and other stuff going on. It shouldn’t get as far as a customer spotting it but even so, making as few as 3 errors in 10000 is high accuracy.

Just apologise and thank them for any advice they can give you to improve. Show willing.
Keep your eyes out for alternative work in case there are redundancies or structural changes afoot.

Keep calm and carry on.

Go on the offensive. Why is there no checking process if it is such a critical process and if the impact eg customer annoyed, is so huge?

I work in risk and controls. Where a human is involved you ALWAYS assume at some point an error will occur.

So the company needs detective and preventive controls.

Preventive: well trained staff with a reasonable workload;

detective: systems that will detect errors at point of input (eg missing or invalid data in a line, or amount larger than an expected range/doesn’t fit the usual pattern of data

Detective: downstream human or IT system checks BEFORE the data is used in a critical process like billing

I’d be asking your manager, what is He or she pushing for, to fix the gaps in the control environment?

It seems ridiculous they rely on anyone to have such a low error rate.

There surely should be a check of some kind.

Your maths is wrong - 3 errors in 9000 entries is 0.00033. If you look at it over 5 years that’s 0.000066. Ludicrously accurate.

Your performance suggestions could include

Visit to optician to check your eye sight is not deteriorating (do they offer support with this?)
A new screen equipment evalutation
and DSE training. To ensure you are at optimum comfort to get the job done..

I work 16h and also have other tasks (less mundane). Data entry is about 30-40% of my time.

Mine is only 6000 on average but I'm just a call centre worker, not data entry so that's including conversations as I make bookings for customers!
So I can see how you could do that easily as without speaking to customers I could hit that

@Snowowls print out these 2 articles and show them how amazing you are:

https://integrationmadeeasy.com/resources/impact-of-human-error-rates/

Your error rate is 0.03% to 0.0375% whereas the average human is 1% to 5%.

https://www.docuclipper.com/blog/data-entry-statistics/#:~:text=Data%20Entry%20Error%20Statistics,4%20errors%20per%20100%20entries.

• For 10,000 data entries, automated systems would make between 1 and 4.1 errors, while humans would commit between 100 and 400 errors.

You are already working like a machine rather than a human. I bet you are able to do a lot more than a machine too - assess and critically think about the entries too.

The NHS has a concept of “never” events - things that should never happen, like amputating the incorrect limb. In 2023/24, there were 370 of these events. You aren’t even necessarily fired for committing such an event, even though they can be life changing for people, if you followed proper process.

If the NHS can handle this level of error, then your data entry job can. The concept of “we can’t make mistakes” is just not attainable, even in much higher stakes environments than yours.

Yes, it’s like something out of the 90s when I started work! I thought we were behind because we’re slow on the implementation of AI!

I’m curious about a job that expects zero errors in a manual data entry. When I worked somewhere which required this we did double entry and then ran a check on the data to flag anomalies. There were anomalies most days, these were corrected. Expecting perfection data entry seems…unrealistic

I was thinking this, surgeons make errors. Data entry is less crucial

join a union

contact acas so that you get advice from them on what the procedure should be

if your company don't follow the correct procedure then you can query this at the time or later at employment tribunal

stressful time for you, be kind to yourself

I'd be searching for another job

I get that it's serious and all the rest of it, but come on

Can you move internally?

You say you work for a blue chip

Search for jobs at other blue chips

Also, are you sure they're not trying to manage you out? Because it's seems a bit OTT, 0.033% error rate etc

Are you sure you job isn't being automated??

If their procedure is a single person inputting data and they expect a 0% error rate then their procedure is shit and bound to fail.