Creating a work environment where people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, and share ideas without fear is critical to business success.
By Simon Kent
The mental health agenda in the workplace continues to pose immense challenges for HR. Creating a psychologically safe workplace is a way to address these issues through organisational culture and overall employee experience, rather than simply reacting to each issue as it surfaces.
As Gina Battye, founder and CEO of Psychological Safety Institute, says, at its core, the psychologically safe workplace is about creating a place where people feel safe to speak up, ask questions, share ideas, challenge assumptions, and even fail—without fear of embarrassment or retribution. To this extent, it goes beyond being a feel-good concept, to proactively supporting great business.
“It’s not just about how someone feels in a physical space,” explains Battye, “it’s about the experience of being in that space or situation with others. It’s deeply personal, rooted in our interactions, and shaped by the environment around us. Put simply, it’s where people can bring their authentic selves to work and still thrive.”But as with many initiatives, what appears a simple aim is not always simply attained. Battye says organisations need to start by putting psychological safety at the heart of their culture—not as a tick-box exercise, but as the foundation everything else is built on. This automatically extends beyond it just being an HR initiative because while HR might instigate and support the idea through training and development, psychological safety will only exist if leaders and everyone else behave appropriately.
“Psychological safety doesn’t happen by accident. It’s leadership behaviour. We embed psychological safety into our learning and development programmes, our team norms, and even our product design sprint because when people feel safe, they not only contribute more, they stay longer, grow faster, and bring others along with them.”
Training and encouragement are paramount to enabling leaders to adopt these traits which may be difficult for some. Some leaders are used to the idea of leading from the front and keeping everyone on a strict path. But using this technique can bring new ideas to organisations. “We embed psychological safety into our learning and development programmes, our team norms, and even our product design sprints,” says Rao, “because when people feel safe, they not only contribute more, they stay longer, grow faster, and bring others along with them.”