Enhancing Psychological Safety in the Workplace
As mental health, belonging, and inclusion are high priorities for many workers, ensuring psychological safety in your workplace has never been more crucial. Psychological safety significantly impacts team performance and employee satisfaction and should be a central pillar of any DEIB strategy.
What is Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety is the feeling that you can freely share your ideas, ask questions, and voice your concerns without the fear of being punished or ridiculed.
Within the workplace, it also refers to the shared belief among team members that others will listen to what they have to say without fear of rejection or embarrassment.
Psychological safety depends on several key conditions:
- Organisational Support for Inclusion and Individuality: Organisations must actively support and promote inclusion and respect individuality.
- Respect for Each Other: Mutual respect among team members is crucial.
- Clarity on Performance: Empowering workers to celebrate successes and learn from mistakes is vital for psychological safety.
- Management Values: Management should value diverse voices and foster a sense of belonging.
According to one McKinsey survey, an overwhelming 89 percent of employee respondents believe that psychological safety in the workplace is essential. However, another McKinsey survey indicates that only 43 percent of respondents report a positive team climate, a key ingredient for psychological safety. This discrepancy highlights a significant gap between the perceived importance of psychological safety and employees’ actual experiences.
It’s important to recognise the interaction between psychological safety and cultural awareness in the workplace. In some cultures, there’s a strong deference to hierarchy. For instance, during meetings, some individuals may wait for senior members to speak before sharing their own suggestions.
When evaluating psychological safety, it’s crucial to determine if this behaviour stems from respect and courtesy or from a fear of speaking up. There’s a concern that unacknowledged suggestions might lead to humiliation or embarrassment. Inclusive leaders can address this by actively inviting input from all team members, especially those less senior, and acknowledging each contribution’s value before sharing their own opinions. This approach fosters a more inclusive and psychologically safe environment.
Why is psychological safety key to high-performing teams
Google’s Project Aristotle sought to understand what makes an effective team by studying high- and low-performing teams. By assessing both team composition and team dynamics, Project Aristotle identified what can impact a team’s effectiveness. They identified five crucial factors:
- Psychological Safety: Team members feel safe to take risks and be themselves.
- Dependability: Team members reliably complete tasks to high standards.
- Structure and Clarity: Clear goals and roles ensure valuable contributions.
- Meaning: Team members find personal significance in their work.
- Impact: Team members know their work makes a positive difference.
Psychological safety was found to be the most critical factor for team performance, both for protecting workers’ mental health and to the running of a successful team.
The importance of belonging
Psychological safety is deeply rooted in workers’ feeling a sense of belonging within their team and workplace.
American author Peter Blocks encourages readers to shift their perspective on company community to bring about the qualities of a true sense of belonging in his book Community: The Structure of Belonging.
He says that belonging is our strongest psychological need and suggests that true belonging requires us to be our true selves.
This fundamental need for belonging is intrinsic to human nature, as we are built to form meaningful connections. Supporting this, a 2020 MIT study found that our craving for social interaction shares the same neural basis as our hunger for food, highlighting the essential role that interpersonal relationships play in our wellbeing.
Another survey of around 1,700 US employees found that when workers feel like they ‘belong’ within their team, a number of fantastic things happen, including:
- A 56% increase in job performance
- A 50% drop in the risk of staff turnover
- A 75% drop in sick days
The same survey revealed that workers are 3.5 times more likely to fully engage with their work if they feel a true sense of belonging and are psychologically safe.
These statistics underscore the impact that a sense of belonging and psychological safety can have on employee performance and organisational health. However, fostering this environment requires a foundational element: trust.
The PwC Global CEO Survey reveals that 55 percent of CEOs see a lack of trust as a major threat to growth. This is particularly concerning given that three in four employees find their boss the most stressful part of their job. This data emphasises the need for organisations to address issues of trust and leadership.
The opportunity to get it right
Of course, with only 43 percent of recent respondents to a McKinsey survey reporting a positive climate within their team, psychological safety still isn’t a universal phenomenon in the working world. While this means many companies are bringing about change, there are some notable examples of large, global companies getting it very wrong.
Surveillance cameras that follow employees’ every move at work, hard to achieve quotas, the fear of summary dismissal are all factors that erode psychological safety and can lead to negative media coverage when employees whistle blow about working conditions at a particular company.
Complaints about bullying, sexual harassment and unfair treatment, especially if employees don’t feel that HR will help if they file a complaint, are another sign that psychological safety may not be a management priority.
Social media is another powerful tool for employee discontent. Some workers have taken to TikTok to complain about employers insisting on home workers keeping webcams on at all times. While the videos have led to employees being fired, they have sparked heated discussions about toxic work environments – even when someone is in the safety of their own home.
Psychological safety significantly impacts workplace decisions and can sometimes undermine DEI goals. For instance, when making hiring decisions, feeling psychologically safe allows you to confidently select unconventional candidates, knowing that your peers will support your decision. Conversely, in a low psychological safety environment, you might prefer the usual candidate, anticipating that even if it doesn’t work out, the choice is easier to justify. This tendency favours cultural fit over diversity of thought and perspective, ultimately hindering efforts to increase representation and diversity within the organisation.
Fostering psychological safety in your workplace
Professor Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School says that leaders must ask themselves four questions to measure psychological safety in their workplace:
- To what degree is it permissible to make mistakes?
- To what degree can difficult or sensitive topics be discussed?
- How much are people willing to help each other?
- To what degree can people be themselves and are accepted for this?
If your company scores positively in all four of these areas, it will likely be a psychologically safe workplace.
In her TEDx talk, Edmondson said leaders should ‘frame the work as a learning problem — not an execution problem — acknowledge your own fallibility, and model curiosity and ask lots of questions.’
Leaders who understand the importance and the power of psychological safety are far more likely to lead truly happy, successful teams.
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