Spotting and correcting your own errors (self-checking)
For anyone whose work is passed to someone else: office, finance and payroll staff, service desk and customer service agents, warehouse and production staff who complete records, and new starters. It builds on 'Reading and following a written procedure accurately', which introduces HSE's slips, lapses, mistakes and violations, so take that first. Here you'll notice the conditions that make your own errors more likely, choose a check that fits the kind of error a task is prone to, check work against its source with read-back, recounts, control totals and a pause before sending, correct errors openly when you find them, and report recurring errors so the task gets fixed. Grounded in UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) human factors guidance, with Microsoft Outlook help and HMRC's VAT guide (UK) for two concrete examples. It does not grant any licence or professional qualification and is not legal or safety advice; your organisation's correction and reporting procedures come first. Ends with a supervisor-graded document-correction task.
- Level
- Beginner
- Length
- About 75 minutes
- Contents
- 5 lessons · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 10 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Identify the conditions that make your own errors more likely, such as fatigue, interruptions and time pressure, before you start a task
- Choose a checking method that fits the kind of error a task is prone to: slips and lapses, or mistakes
- Check your work against its source using read-back, recounts, control totals and a pause before sending
- Correct an error you've found in your own work: fix it at the source, tell the people affected and record what changed
- Report recurring errors and near misses so the task can be redesigned, not just done more carefully
Course outline
- 1.Identify the conditions that make your own errors more likely before you start a taskLesson · 12 min
- 2.Choose a checking method that fits the kind of error a task is prone toLesson · 13 min
- 3.Check your work against its source using read-back, recounts, control totals and a pause before sendingLesson · 13 min
- 4.Correct an error you've found in your own work: fix it at the source, tell the people affected and record what changedLesson · 12 min
- 5.Report recurring errors and near misses so the task can be redesignedLesson · 10 min
- 6.Spotting and correcting your own errors (self-checking): knowledge checkKnowledge check · 12 questions
- 7.Spotting and correcting your own errors (self-checking): practical exerciseKnowledge check · 1 question
- 8.Final exam10 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- HSE: Managing human failures, overview
- HSE: Human failure types aide-memoire (PDF)
- HSE: Performance influencing factors (PDF)
- HSE: Human factors, fatigue
- HSE: Core topic 2, human factors in accident investigations (PDF)
- Microsoft Support: Delay or schedule sending email messages in Outlook
- HMRC: VAT guide (VAT Notice 700), section 18.2 credit notes (UK)
See it with your own jobs and topics
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