It appears that distraction is very much a Health & Safety at work issue. Quoting from a recent Times article
Pilots of a Northwest Airlines jetliner that overshot its destination by 240km (150 miles) last week told US investigators they became distracted during an extended discussion of crew scheduling that included their use of personal laptops, officials said yesterday.
“The pilots said there was a concentrated period of discussion where they did not monitor the plane or calls from [air-traffic controllers] even though both stated they heard conversation on the radio,” the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said after interviewing the pair.
“Both said they lost track of time,” the safety board said in a report on their investigation …
Whilst we’re not all pilots and we’re not all in charge of critical machines, I wonder how often is plain distraction, a cause of accidents at work?
Very interesting blog and a good point about the impact of distractions in an organisation. I know of one company who had a very complex process for adjudicating health claims (for a large US healthcare provider). They discovered that one of the leading causes of errors leading to incorrect judgements (paying a claim when it should not be paid or vice versa) was distractions. By creating a period of time during the day where all complex adjudications could be considered without interruptions from phones or questions from collegues (they called it ‘Head Down Time’) the number of adjudication errors dropped significantly.
I think this is a more common problem than many people realise – particularly with complex or tedious processes!!