psychological safety at work
In the past decade, many organisations have expanded their workplace health and safety focus to include psychological safety.
Psychological safety exists when people feel they will not be punished or put down for speaking up with ideas, questions or concerns.
In our Everyday Safety for Operational Leaders program, we identify a psychologically safe environment as one in which you feel comfortable to:
Share a new or silly idea
Challenge the status quo
Ask for help
Report a fault or a problem
Give candid feedback
Be vulnerable / exposed
Talk openly about errors or mistakes
When you’re psychologically safe, you know you can do these things without being blamed, criticised or bullied. You feel confident that you belong in the team, and that your contributions are welcomed and valued.
Psychological safety is inextricably linked to good mental health in the workplace. As a bedrock for relationships and trust, a psychologically safe environment supports good employee mental health.
We know from Safe Work Australia data that in 2019–20 mental health injury accounted for more than 10,700 serious injury claims, which was up by more than 1200 claims on the previous year.
Every year we work with collaborators on campaigns and learning experiences to support good workplace mental health. Sometimes it’s through our in-depth leadership programs that we set leaders up to build safe team environments, other times it’s through specific campaigns for days like R U OK? Day.
But we’re also a team that places high value on practicing what we preach. We walk our talk with an annual experience program designed to support the wellbeing, connection and safety of Everyday Massive’s 30-strong team.
For this week’s SafeTea chat, we’re talking to the EM team about recent work we’ve done in the mental health space and why working in a psychologically safe environment where you’re encouraged to Let Your Freak Flag Fly has made work an absolute joy.
If you want to learn more about how we can help you build a more psychologically safe workplace, book a call with us today.
For the month of October, we’re also sharing one of our top tools for engaging your workforce in safety. Just sign up for our Everyday Insights newsletter before 31 October 2022 and Three Ways to Engage Your Workforce in Safety will land in your inbox.
