Experts explain how getting psychological safety wrong can lead to liability and stifled growth
The Mental Health Commission of Canada announced this month it will be developing a new program to support employers in fostering psychological safety in their workforces.
Over three years, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is putting roughly $820,000 towards a Psychological Health and Safety Audit Program, to train and assist employers with implementing psychological safety.
But what exactly is psychological safety, and how is it different from other wellbeing and engagement programs? Are there legal considerations?
Canadian HR Reporter spoke with three experts in the field to find out why psychologically safe work environments are more crucial now than ever – not only for employee wellbeing but performance, productivity and the bottom line.
Psychological safety and humility in leadership
Michael Daniels, assistant professor of organizational behaviour and human resources at the Sauder School of Business at U.B.C., defines psychological safety as “an organizational climate where it's a shared belief that it's acceptable and okay to fail, and to take risks, and to be vulnerable in front of people without feeling like you will incur some universal cost in doing so.”
A focus of Daniels’ research is humility in leadership, and this is the most important quality a manager or leader can possess if they want to create an environment of psychological safety, he says.
But actions speak louder than words, and policies – a favourite tactic for many an HR leader, says Daniels – are not enough to be truly effective. Even the “nicest” manager will fail at achieving a psychologically safe environment if they are not able to demonstrate through their actions that they are willing to admit their mistakes. This failure can have consequences in the form of lowered productivity or high turnover, especially during times of uncertainty.
“The clearest way to communicate what you value, and what's important to you as a leader, is through your own behaviour — people notice that,” he says.
“What would move the needle the most is demonstrating through your behaviour that you do value taking risks, you do value being open and honest about mistakes that you make and learning from them and moving forward from that. … to cross that hierarchical boundary and work alongside you and laugh with you and make fun of [yourself] — that's a really clear signal to employees that ‘OK, this is a safer environment than one where a leader prefers to reinforce that hierarchical boundary.’”
Psychological safety programs proactively address workplace stress
Conducting an audit for psychological safety can be beneficial to organizations in establishing a basis of acceptance of mental health, where stigma could potentially lead to discrimination claims, says Shannon Sproule, employment lawyer and workplace investigator at TurnpennyMilne.
“We've learned a lot about stigma and the negative impact of stigma,” she says. “We've also learned that a workplace does impact mental health, whether you already have a condition or you don't. Stress in the workplace, inflexible schedules, things like that, can really impact mental health… in terms of legal considerations for HR departments, being proactive and being inclusive, this is a positive step forward.
“However, it still won't extinguish the need to treat specific employees’ accommodation requests that are based on mental health seriously.”
Another important factor when implementing a psychological safety audit is clear and effective communication with employees about all of the steps to be expected, if they will be communicated with, and how confidentiality will be handled, says Sproule.
“One thing I would also stress is that if there are employees in the workplace who have mental health conditions, when we're talking about psychological safety, mental health, wellness, being proactive, being inclusive, we're mindful that we're not using those employees as examples. We're still protecting their privacy, and we're not putting a spotlight on them,” she says.
“You can still use what you've learned as HR from accommodating employees in terms of best practices, but your employees should not feel that you're now conflating the two.”
Privacy concerns around psychological safety audits
The MHCC launched its National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace program in 2013. The new audit program, administered by Open Minds, is in the pilot phase, and employers are invited to participate in courses to have internal auditors trained and certified or to engage third-party auditors.
If a department, team, group or an entire workforce is experiencing high turnover, this could be a “red flag” indicating a psychological audit might be necessary, says Fiona McFarlane, employment lawyer and investigator for KSW Lawyers in Vancouver.
“Everybody wants to go to work and not have it be the worst thing that happens to them in their day, so if you're seeing any these red flags, then it's worthwhile having an audit done or having a workplace assessment done,” she says. “What's important is privacy.”
Approaching a group that is experiencing high turnover, stress leaves or other signs of discord can be tricky, because employees often will be afraid to divulge the truth for fear of being retaliated against, says Sproule. For this reason, employers must maintain transparency ahead of the process, informing employees of who will see their responses, what it will be used for, and how long it will be kept on file.
Being culturally and trauma-informed
External auditors can be useful in these scenarios, she says.
“What's important is that they have a real understanding of how to inquire in a way that is culturally informed, because you may have, based on Canada being very multicultural, a whole bunch of different people who aren't comfortable, necessarily, talking about perhaps a bully if they’re in a power position to them. Also, being trauma-informed as well because we all bring our personal life into our work.”
Another crucial aspect for a productive psychological safety audit, McFarlane says, is genuine buy-in from management, and commitment to making changes based on the feedback they receive.
“If that senior leadership is really just doing it because WorkSafeBC, or the equivalent in other provinces, has ordered it because they had five bullying and harassment complaints that were compensated, then that's not it. That won't really change things.”
The common knowledge effect: consequences of un-psychologically safe workplaces
Workplaces and teams that are not psychologically safe can hurt the organization’s ability to thrive in a larger uncertain economic landscape, Daniels says, because fear of making mistakes leads to stifled innovation.
Some managers feel that their teams benefit from being “a little on edge, that you light the fire under them a little bit” to get the best results, he says. This approach, however, leads to a condition called the “common knowledge effect”, which can be a death-knell for creativity and growth.
“When there's that fear of failing and making mistakes, and taking risks, that leads people to not want to offer ideas they might have, especially those that might be a little out of left field,” says Daniels. “What tends to happen in a low psychologically safe team, all the members start talking, and they focus their conversation around information that's already known.”
This can even happen in diverse teams, he says, with diverse expertise or knowledge, which means valuable contributions are being left unsaid due to psychologically unsafe work environments.
“What that results in is just lame teams, lame outcomes, lame decisions, lacking creativity.”
Two principles to build psychological safety
Another common pitfall for employers is thinking that psychological safety means making employees comfortable, Daniels says, when in fact it is about making them feel comfortable, with the aim of encouraging risk-taking and innovative ideas and challenging the status quo – all qualities that contribute a resilient workplace.
“Don't think of it as purely just a policy change — it's really about climate change, and the shared feeling that people have on the team,” he says. “That's really what psychological safety is, it's that ‘I can take a risk’ or ‘I'm trying different things, it's probably going to feel uncomfortable.’ But you want people to feel safe in exploring that idea, instead of living in that discomfort.”
It’s more than just putting up signs oro sending out a memo that says, “This is how we are here,” says Daniels. “That's not how culture and climate are created; it's often created from a bit of top-down, but a lot of bottom-up as well.”
A lot of HR departments love to create a policy to fix this problem, he says.
“A lot of it is a lot messier than that. It's around demonstrating the behaviours that you want to see; it's around getting buy-in from people so that it doesn't feel like it's an HR initiative, which often has people rolling their eyes a little bit. You want it to feel like, ‘Hey, this is an organizational initiative, this is something that we all care about.’”
