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In reply to Steve Bridger:

I'll take this opportunity to truly embarrass myself with a rather large blunder in my early career.

Everything was done via teams as we were a multi site operation across the UK, we had a round of redundancies and during consultation with a very challenging individual which went on and on and had various allegations thrown towards their line manager.

After what seemed like an eternity the consultation was over and I hit stop recording/transcribing.

The employee left the meeting and the manager and I had a very candid conversation regarding the events that had just unfolded.

I then sent the recording to the employee and started on the minutes.

About 3 hours had passed and I couldn't understand why the recording was saying it was 25 minutes longer than the consultation had lasted for. Then reality hit, I felt sick and as I nervously fast forwarded to the end of the meeting sure enough, there is me and the manager shooting the breeze about the individual.

Luckily, I managed to delete everything before it was accessed, but I learnt a very valuable lesson that day and it took me about 2 weeks before I slept properly again!

In reply to Graham:

*Very* easily done, Graham. And likely to become more common with the uptick in people using Co-Pilot and similar to write their minutes for them. The "Any Other Business" section could become extremely interesting reading!

I've made a number of professional blunders over the years, but whilst they were mortifying in person I suspect they'd look rather dull to the outsider. I firmly believe that mistakes are our greatest learning opportunities. The trick is to find safe spaces in which to make them.

*gestures at the Community in general*

I spent months accidentally putting the pension contributions into employee rather than employer because I'd put them in the wrong spreadsheet column and as I simply copied the format each month, it never got corrected. Had to pay the pension scheme admin fees to undo what I had done so now I am probably unnecessarily slow and careful because there is no way I'd let it happen again! It was soul destroying at the time :')

Years ago, I was facilitating an assessment centre for a senior finance role — a full-on day of interviews, tests, and exercises (the kind that might send candidates running these days!).

One task was a prepared presentation based on some documents received and then sent in advance. Over lunch, the panel remarked that all the presentations had been technically flawless... which rang alarm bells. I checked the PDF we’d sent — the suggested findings were (unclearly) tucked away in the final tab of a spreadsheet. They shouldn’t have been included.

I owned up before the afternoon session — thankfully, the "assessment overkill" meant we had plenty of other data to move forward with. Interestingly, only one candidate referenced the hidden answers.

I now double-check every attachment I send.

I've not done anything (yet) that's worthy of noting in this thread but I just wanted to say I love reading these and it's really reassuring for an anxious brain like mine that slip ups don't spell the end of my career!

Not HR related. But:-

I was an 18 year old radio operator on board a naval frigate sailing across the vast Indian Ocean in the dead of night to the South China Seas.
Things were pretty quiet signals wise. We'd normally have two operators on watch at a time but as it was so quiet our chief told me I could man the radio office on my own. I'd normally have a more experienced colleague with me. This would be the first time I'd manned the 'office', on my own.

I was typing up a classified confidential signal on a teleprinter for later transmission to Whitehall, London, through an automatic encrypting machine. I was also keeping my eyes and ears open on the incoming telex messages, which given the time of night was pretty quiet too.

I hadn't been typing a minute when I heard the inbound telex/teleprinter channel alarm go off. This is pretty rare and only for emergency signals. A quick look and it was an alert stating that someone was transmitting a classified confidential message in the 'clear', unencrypted live over the air. Nothing too exciting and it was obviously not me as I'd not even switched the transmitter on or connected the teleprinter I was using to it. So off I went and carried on typing. A minute later the alarm went off again. This was even more unusual so I popped over and had a look. It was the same message as before. So I returned to my typing. It was then that I noticed that the teleprinter I was using was connected to an office further along the corridor where all the transmitters were housed. Mmmm? I quickly ran to the transmitter room to discover not only was my teleprinter connected to a transmitter but the transmitter had been left on by a previous user... Aghhhhh ! I was the cause of the alarm signal......

I'd normally be honest and own up to a mistake, but this was potentially serious so I had visions of being Court Martialled and thrown to the sharks. So I kept quiet and hoped the operator  back in Whitehall, London didn't report the security breach - although it would be rather difficult to trace the culprit or ship as I hadn't typed up enough.

I had difficulty sleeping the next few days, but nothing happened. I never made the same mistake again though!!.

David, that is a fantastic blunder, gave me a good chuckle on a Friday.

I am surprised/disappointed that this thread hasn't gained more traction given the amount of views.

In reply to Graham:

Perhaps:-
a) No one wants to admit a mistake.
b) No one noticed they made a mistake.
c) Too shy to admit a mistake.
d) Too arrogant to admit a mistake.
e) Too busy to contribute
f) No one made a mistake.
g) Other. :-)