If you are employed by Riverside County the “Consequence of Error” is a factor in determining your overall pay level. Most of us have what we believe to be highly responsible jobs. Not to take anything away from that concept, there are jobs that if you simply make an error, the next person down the line catches your mistake and corrects it.
Whereas, other jobs which might even seem simple at first glance in terms of basic knowledge needed to perform the duties, but require that no errors be made from inaccuracy, inattention or poor decisions.
In any case, the consequence of making the error is usually described in terms of the loss. When we study consequences we look at two variables: cost; and welfare and safety of others.
Cost – Includes time, money, property, and operational efficiency and services to the public.
Welfare and Safety of Others – Includes services directly affecting the mental and physical health or safety and well being of the public.
Early on in my HR career as an analyst studying groups of positions for classification purposes I would perfunctorily ask the incumbent I was interviewing, “What would happen if you made an error?” A typical answer would be something like, “The ledger wouldn’t balance and my supervisor would have to determine where the mistake was made.
On one assignment I was to study a group of positions providing clerical support for the District Attorney’s Office. The incumbents worked directly with the Deputies to prepare their case files and a variety legal documents.
I asked the first person that I interviewed, “What would happen if you made an error in your work?” Her reply gave me a new respect for this factor’s use to distinguish how we compensate and classify one job from another. The duties of the work were similar to any other legal-clerical position, with one very big difference.
Her response to my question concerned checking the correct box on one of the forms they used all the time. It seems that a mistake in a keystroke could result in, her words, “A bad guy gets out of jail that shouldn’t be.” This hadn’t occurred in the District Attorney’s Office, but in the prior two months it had happen to a counterpart with the City of Riverside.
In this particular situation the person released from County jail was a person that you definitely didn’t want walking the streets. Later I found it had been extensively reported in the Riverside newspaper. Hearing what had gone on gave me a new respect for evaluation of positions using this factor. And, I could certainly see that it would distinguish one job from another.
If you are working in the private sector in an undervalued position you could; a) complain to your employer (…yeah right), or b) check out Riverside County’s Desert Jobs! Better yet, just skip “a” and go straight to “b”.