Why Does Psychological Safety at Work Matter?
Business leaders and employees are still humans, and still function according to psychological principles.
Psychological Safety is crucial to business success. Employees can only focus, create and collaborate when they feel psychologically safe. When people are disregulated, these mechanisms shut down. A psychologically safe community supports its members, and produces stronger business outcomes. An aligned workforce pulls together toward implementing change, and achieving your company’s vision as a team.
Psychologically unsafe environments stress the body and making people more likely to develop mental health issues, fall ill, and take longer to recover. They are also simply unpleasant environments to work in, pushing people to leave their jobs.
What is Psychological Safety?
In addition to actual physical safety from harm and danger, humans have a fundamental need for psychological safety — the feeling of safety. Psychological safety comes from cues of safety and corregulation with other humans. It is a state where people are able to relate “normally” with calm and playful curiosity.
“Danger” cues may still arise sometimes. The community is able to support each other, resolve the issues, co-regulate the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and return to a more calm state. The “danger” must not come from within the community.
This is fundamental psychological science from Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory of the nervous system.
Why Improve Psychological Safety at Work?
Many businesses’ core values include People, Wellbeing, Employee Experience, etc. These organisations must develop psychologically safe work cultures! A lack of Psychological Safety can manifest in many different ways:
- High rates of mental ill health, physical ill health, and sick leave. Humans’ abilities to take care of their bodies are suppressed when their systems are in survival mode.
- This increases HR costs, decreases productivity, and overstrains the remaining workforce.
- Poor staff retention, high turnover. Many employees will simply leave environments that do not feel safe.
- This leads to high recruitment costs and training costs, and creates a feeling of instability and uncertainty.
- Poor communication. Hiding problems. Defensiveness. Blame culture. Little risk taking. Disengaging. These are all indications that employees do not feel safe in their work.
- This reduces quality of work and productivity. It also reinforces the unsafe work culture.
- Reduced innovation, creativity and collaboration.
- Falling behind competitors will lead to failure in the long-term.
Poor psychological safety in a business environment creates a cycle of disengagement, mistrust, and stress that impacts both individuals and the organization’s overall success. Cultivating psychological safety is essential to foster a healthy, innovative, and high-performing workplace.
Embrace Connections Builds Psychological Safety
Embrace Connections creates containers for thousands of people to feel safe and comfortable, open up, express vulnerably and connect authentically. Treasure has been building communities, organising events, teaching relational skills and helping people reinvent their social lives for over a decade.
Human connection has been crucial to thriving communities since early humans began to gather together. In the modern business world there aren’t many people and businesses directly serving this essential, fundamental niche. Treasure brings experience, passion and safety to communities like yours. Find out more about us!
How to Create Psychological Safety at Work?
Relationships and community are the foundation of Psychological Safety. Build in systems of care and support. Improve trust, empathy, and communication between colleagues. This will help your company culture thrive. Colleagues will support eachother’s wellbeing. Stronger teams will produce better results.
With clear vision, intentional strategy and conscious action, you can control and improve Psychological Safety.
- Build harmonious communites in the workplace
- Integrate company values into business systems and work practices
- Establish better ways of working together and supporting each other
- Develop soft skills like trust, empathy and communication
- Create a real sense of “Belonging”
From empowered employees taking responsability for their needs, to colleagues supporting each other with empathy and trust, to managers fostering harmonious, communicative teams and directors valuing psychological safety in the wellbeing strategy, everybody must be involved in integrating psychological safety at all levels of the business.
There is no single “psychological safety button” that you can press. But there are many levers big and small, simple and complex that you can use to influence psychological safety. The first step is accepting that you can. For the next steps, contact us!
Outcomes
Better for Employees
Feel safe and comfortable. Feel happier in the work environment.
Enjoy your workday more with nourishing interactions with colleagues. Understand and communicate your ways of working. Collaborate more comfortably with your teammates.
Feel less stressed. Enjoy better health and wellbeing. Support and be supported by your peers. Your best mental health resource at work sits at the desk next to you, works on your team and shares a coffee with you in the break room.
Better for Employers
Deliver a superior employee value proposition. Put people first. Create a psychologically safe environment. Show that you are delivering on your people strategy
Improve hiring and retention. More connective, supportive company cultures are more attractive to applicants. Happier, well integrated employees are more likely to stay in their current jobs.
A human-centered community experiences better workplace wellbeing, and a healthier workforce.
High functioning, communicative teams achieve better business outcomes.
People are the heart of your business. What are you doing to help your teams thrive?
Solution: hands-on workshops for building psychological safety
Embrace Connections supports values-driven SMEs in building psychological safety through human connection.
Simple and accessible half day/full day team-building workshops based around human connection focus directly on building psychological safety and improving workplace culture. Participants will leave feeling more connected and supported. Stronger relationships and community established during the day will directly improve business operations and workplace wellbeing.