The concept of psychological safety might not be a new one for workplaces, but the importance it has as a foundation stone for every successful initiative, change, or progression in a company can’t be underestimate.

Watch our webinar with Transformation Expert Tom Bryant where we talk about the impact of Psychological Safety at work and the actions HR professionals can take to improve it and use it to your advantage.

Click the image to go to the webinar recording

Three high impact results from focusing on Psychological Safety at work:

1. Psychological Safety (or a lack of) shows up in different ways in different types of teams. For large companies, silo-mentality will develop, in small companies the fear of visible mistakes inhibits people, in operational teams pressure to achieve targets gets in the way of psychologically safe work, and in remote or non-desk based teams a lack of easily accessible communication quickly creates a negative narrative in the minds of individuals. Because of this, no singular approach to improving psychological safety in the workplace will work. You need to assess what behaviours are showing up to work backwards to the root cause of the lack of psychological safety.
2. To gain influence with key stakeholders, use both qualitative and quantitative data to highlight why a lack of psychological safety is preventing a company from achieving the growth, change or innovation targets it has set for itself. In HR we have the opportunity to look at the hard data of sickness absence, grievances and lack of engagement, and combine it with 1-2-1 conversations or survey data to build a powerful picture for our leaders of where the real barriers to success are.
3. Using a Psychological Safety Audit (such as the one shown on the webinar) can uncover areas of concern (or strength) you didn’t know you had. We suggest that if you suspect a lack of psychological safety is an issue, then going straight in with a full survey might be too difficult for people to respond confidently to. Embed questions at the start of a project, as part of team meetings, in 1-2-1s or as part of exit interviews to help get an understanding of how employees feel.

If your organisation wants to work more on its Psychological Safety, then contact us to talk about online or in-person workshops to help you on your journey.