Psychological Safety for Employees

The need to create psychological safety in the workplace has never been more urgent. A decade ago, Google’s Project Aristotle famously found that psychological safety is the top driver of team success for all employees

So how can organisations create a psychologically safe work environment? It all comes down to empathetic leadership. Empathetic leaders approach their teams with a mindset of openness, growth, and authenticity while setting up systems at their companies to embed psychological safety into everyday team practices. Psychological safety does not mean that employees don’t need to perform at a high level—in fact, we find that in a psychologically safe environment, employees are more motivated and more ambitious.

What Psychological Safety Is—and Isn’t

Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe to speak up in the workplace and take risks without fear of being blamed or criticized. In a group work setting, employees who feel psychologically safe are more likely to test the status quo, admit mistakes, view failure as a growth opportunity, and be their authentic selves.

However, psychological safety shouldn’t be interpreted as a license to bring to the workplace views or opinions that may damage others’ psychological safety and feelings of inclusion. Achieving this delicate balance requires a mix of policies and guidelines, leadership role modeling, and a culture built on respect and empathy.

But some common myths about psychological safety persist:

• You have to avoid conflict.
  Not true. When employees are unwilling to express dissent, it’s a sign that your team isn’t psychologically safe. It means people are reluctant to voice their genuine concerns. When team members do feel safe, they raise problems, debate ideas, and share openly because they aren’t afraid of being penalized for speaking up. All this, of course, within the context of respect for colleagues and their psychological safety.

• Performance will suffer because you’re coddling people.
  Psychological safety doesn’t mean overlooking poor performance. It means giving direct feedback so that people can learn from their mistakes—in a discussion that frames the issue as an opportunity for growth, not a sign of failure.

• Every team member is equally responsible for the team’s psychological safety. Although collective buy-in is important, leaders still have an outsize impact. They set the tone by being role models and signaling what behaviors will be rewarded and what won’t be tolerated. Psychological safety can flourish only if it’s driven by leaders.

• Only struggling teams need it.
  All teams benefit from psychological safety because it gives them the power to be more creative and to focus on learning.

What the Data Shows

When leaders use empathy to build psychological safety, their employees experience positive outcomes: significant increases in motivation and happiness, feeling valued and respected, and feeling enabled to reach their full potential

Empathetic leaders create a safe working environment, support employees when things get tough, and show respect for the perspectives, emotions, and life situations of team members. They value the feelings and experiences of others and recognize how these might vary depending on cultural background, race, or ethnicity; LGBTQ+ identity; health conditions, disability, or neurodiversity; caregiver status; and more.

When empathetic leaders build a culture of psychological safety, our data shows, retention risk is reduced. Twelve percent of employees with the lowest levels of psychological safety said they were likely to quit within a year. But when psychological safety is high, only 3% of employees are at risk of quitting.

The positive effects of psychological safety are particularly pronounced among women, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

In short, improving psychological safety drives positive outcomes for all employees but delivers outsize gains for diverse employee groups. It is the equalizer that brings employees of all backgrounds up to the same high-water mark of happiness at work—and erases the attrition gap.

What Empathetic Leaders Do

Leaders have the influence to ensure that team members feel safe, supported, and understood. It starts with empathy. Here’s how.

Formalize time for sharing and learning.
At the start of meetings, carve out a few minutes for team members to share something new they’ve learned, an activity from their weekend, or something personal from their life. This lets people engage with one another as humans first, before diving into content. Importantly, as the leader, feel free to share your own successes and challenges—research has shown that when leaders are vulnerable, it sets the tone for psychological safety in a team.

Hold regular team reflections or “retrospectives.”
Provide opportunities to reflect on how the team is doing. Participants can share thoughts on what’s going well and suggest ways to improve the work environment for the whole team.

Be open and authentic.
Candidly share your own mistakes and lessons learned with the team. Leaders don’t have all the answers, and being open about that empowers team members to share their own ideas without fear of judgment or embarrassment.

Challenge ideas, not people.
When delivering feedback, make sure that any criticism focuses on the substance of the work, not the person who did the work: focus on opportunities to improve the content. Acknowledge employees for their contributions to the process, even when they don’t land on the perfect idea or output on the first try.

Address problems directly.
Employees need to feel safe questioning ideas, policies, and practices, even if this creates a certain amount of conflict or disagreement. By fostering a culture of productive disagreement and debate, you can encourage deeper levels of understanding and trust and deal with issues before they escalate.

Consider cultural context.
Your employees may come from different cultures, and not everyone has the same comfort level when it comes to sharing their thoughts and feelings. You can’t force others to be open with you—and you shouldn’t try. Instead, create space for them to share if and when they’re ready.