What Is Psychological Safety?

When we think of employee health and safety, our thoughts – perhaps inevitably – turn to their physical safety, with a plethora of rules, training and risk assessments provided together with a strong focus on compliance.

The challenge with only focusing in this area is that you can’t fix a secret.  Many of our clients have problems with incidents and near misses not being reported (or reported fully) and staff ploughing on with risky work because they don’t feel comfortable speaking up. 

Creating psychological safety is a way of addressing these challenges, but is easier said than done.

What is a psychologically safe workplace?

Quite simply, psychological safety means ensuring that your employees feel safe to speak up, challenge, report openly and make suggestions without the fear of negative consequences, reprisals and ridicule.

Sometimes this is merely a perception, but this will still drive your staff’s behaviour. Moving away from a culture of blame and fear towards a culture of learning is one way of creating a psychologically workplace safe culture.

Respecting and valuing your staff’s opinions and knowledge is another way of building a psychologically safe culture, as is showing that you really care about your staff, something that can be difficult in more macho, high-risk industries.

We have worked in many companies where staff have seen the company’s efforts on safety as about protecting the company rather than protecting staff, and not feeling cared for or valued is a large driver for this.

How to promote psychological safety at work

There is an old Dutch proverb that trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Similarly, creating psychological safety is a slow process and one false step from leadership can set you back months. 

Senior managers need to be authentic about the benefits of creating a learning culture with more open reporting, as opposed to looking for someone to blame when things go wrong.  You will not create psychological safety unless you truly believe this is the right thing to do.

Showing appreciation and acknowledgement for more open behaviours is another way of building the desired culture. This could be for someone being open about a near miss they are responsible for, or for someone that has spoken up, challenged decisions or stopped a job on safety grounds. 

It is critical to never argue staff down who challenge or have a different opinion. Be curious as to why they are doing this and ask questions to understand instead.

As a leader, it is important to understand that there are not many people in the world who come to work to take risks and get hurt. Most people take risks because they are trying to get a job done and because they think they have a handle on the hazards.  

Sometimes they are just responding to pressure and the culture that leaders have created.  We also have to accept that we are all human and we all make mistakes. As long as we learn from these and don’t repeat them, we are making progress.  

Driving reporting underground is not the answer. People also have bad days, they have things going on in life that can be a big distraction and any distraction may result in lapses or unusual behaviours.  

Checking in and getting to know your staff is really critical before you set them to work in  high-hazard situations, and it is an important step in keeping your staff safe. 

All of this (and lots more!) will help you build psychological safety and resilience into the heart of your organisation. If you’d like any further guidance in this area, get in touch with the WhyNot Partnering team today.