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According to the survey, 35 per cent of men are embarrassed by these mistakes compared to just 13 per cent of women.

Paul Brenchley, Vice President EMEA for Tower Software explained that the most common outcome from these errors among respondents was personal embarrassment (23 per cent). However, he said that this pales against the business reality of losing customers, legal battles, staff dismissals, poor publicity and worst of all – failing to meet regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, MIFID, e-government and beyond.

"Perhaps more worrying, is that these statistics are just the errors that we know about, or that people are prepared to admit to. The problem is probably far greater, particularly as the errors are perpetuated by the re-use of wrong or out of date computer files, documents and email."

Of the employees questioned, 63 per cent say negative consequences have resulted from the presentation of incorrect information. In addition, 8 per cent say legal action was taken out against their organisation, 7 per cent say they suffered bad publicity and 6 per cent say they actually lost customers.

Eighty-five per cent of all senior managers are dealing with at least one business issue related to risk mitigation, regulation, compliance or growth. Forty per cent are dealing with all of them. Yet, over a third (34 per cent) of employees at middle manager or below have worked on a wrong or out of date version of a computer file or document because colleagues have worked on it and not saved it correctly.

The survey claims that this happens to more employees in the private sector (6 per cent), where there is a lower take-up of electronic data and records management (EDRM) systems such as TRIM Context solution, than the public sector. According to the report this is because the public sector has been more heavily regulated, for longer.

Almost half (47 per cent) of those surveyed admit fewer mistakes would be made by employees if computer files were shared in a proper manner. Almost a third (30 per cent) believes they would be better able to meet regulatory compliance, and 27 per cent think there would be better corporate governance.

“Also interesting is that 35 per cent of employees think a computer file sharing system would allow them to track the source of leaked email,” concludes Brenchley. “Technically, email content is a corporate file, and should be treated as such. Anecdotes such as government agency employees leaking confidential reports to the press is indicative of the growing corporate risk posed by poor email management.”

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• Tower Software