Sandi Wassmer
Chief Executive Officer, The Employers Network for Equality and Inclusion (ENEI)
Explore the critical role of psychological safety in fostering workplace trust, inclusion and productivity.
Psychological safety thrives in an inclusive culture, where everyone feels able to appropriately express their views, put forward ideas, raise concerns, make mistakes and learn from them without fear of judgment or reprisal. It is the foundation for happiness and wellbeing at work and leads to higher performance, productivity, creativity and innovation.
What is workplace psychological safety?
When people feel psychologically safe, they feel respected and valued, which engenders trust and leads to engagement and motivation, as well as increased loyalty. It also encourages diversity of thinking, with more people feeling free to express their views, which provides the necessary challenge for good decision-making.
It also promotes a culture of continuous improvement, as making mistakes and learning from them becomes the norm. Conversely, having an environment that is not psychologically safe leads to reduced performance, lower productivity, higher levels of stress and burnout and increased absence and staff turnover.
Creating a psychologically
safe environment takes time.
How to create a psychologically safe environment
Creating a psychologically safe environment takes time, in the same way that it does to build trust and respect. These are things that need to be earned, not imposed or demanded.
Start by being transparent and setting clear goals and expectations. If you are not clear about where you’re headed or how you want people to get there, what you get tends to be a fearful, insecure and uncertain workforce.
Be consistent. If you have one set of rules for one group and another set of rules for another, this is the quickest way to erode trust. Regular, open, human and straightforward communication is vital.
Whatever is going on in your organisation, you owe it to your employees to communicate with them in a way that makes them feel included and part of something bigger. When employees are not appropriately communicated with, they begin to fill in the blanks, and it will rarely be a positive picture that they paint.
Foster kindness and feedback
Every interaction that an employee has with leaders, managers, direct reports, peers and other employees matters. So, making sure that everyone understands the importance of being kind, compassionate, supportive and non-judgemental is vital. Guidance and training on how to give and receive feedback, along with developing listening skills, should be available for everyone.
When people feel the freedom and openness that a psychologically safe environment offers, the possibilities for both employer and employee are limitless.
