Executive Summary

Diedrick Graham, PhD, Vice President of Culture and Strategy at The Healy⁺ Group, sheds light on the importance of prioritizing belonging, well-being, and psychological safety in the workplace.

Right now, organizations face unprecedented turbulence and their workforces feel the effects of that turbulence, too. Thus, organizational challenges include managing a stressed and stretched-thin workforce buffeted by the pandemic, economic uncertainty, and the demands of working in the “new normal” hybrid workplace, which has yet to stabilize and become routine.

Yet, despite the chaotic environment of the last several years, some organizations have remained highly productive with an engaged workforce that relishes working and contributing to the organization’s mission. What are these organizations doing right?

Prioritizing Belonging and Wellbeing

Even though the majority of organizations now have DEI initiatives, many focus on just three aspects of their employees’ identity: race, gender, and sexual orientation. While many such initiatives have allowed organizations to make real progress in creating a more welcoming work environment, the best places to work know that such a narrow focus is not sufficient.

Leading organizations know that they must go beyond formulaically addressing discrimination against the classes of people protected by law. They know they must create an environment of belonging and well-being for everyone where all employees feel accepted as the individuals they are. By doing so, the organization empowers its employees to contribute their best work. As a result, the organization benefits from increased productivity, innovation, and resilience, as well as reduced workforce churn and disengagement. 

A core underpinning of a culture where belonging and well-being are prioritized is the emphasis on psychological safety. A lack of psychological safety will stymie any efforts—no matter how sincere and well-meaning—to create a more inclusive and diverse workplace.

Psychological Safety Drives Belonging and Wellbeing—as well as a Stronger Bottom Line

The concept of “psychological safety” was initially defined by Amy Edmondson in 1999 as “a shared belief among team members that the team’s a space for interpersonal risk-taking.” Multiple studies have shown that promoting psychological safety in the workplace is vital to an organization’s success. Creating a work environment where individuals feel secure and comfortable expressing their thoughts, ideas, and concerns enables individuals to take risks without facing consequences like humiliation, rejection, or punishment.

Psychological safety has been found to undergird employees’ sense of belonging and lead to improved mental and physical well-being, increased productivity and creativity, and enhanced teamwork and collaboration. On the flip side, a lack of safety is correlated with increased stress, anxiety, and burnout, as well as reduced performance and organizational effectiveness.

Key aspects of psychological safety are mutual trust among colleagues, comfort in expressing ideas and giving feedback, a sense of shared mission and common goals, and the feeling of support from both colleagues and management.

A psychologically safe environment is not synonymous with a lack of conflict. On the contrary, an organization that prioritizes psychological safety allows for strong disagreements where individuals feel free to be vulnerable by sharing their ideas and thoughts. Because a psychologically safe organization cultivates a culture of trust and respect, it allows for a productive exchange of competing views, which prevents groupthink, increases creativity and innovation, improves decision-making, and ultimately leads to better results.

Creating a Psychologically Safe Organization

Trust, empathy, and openness are critical elements of a safe environment. Fostering these attributes in an organization cannot be left to chance. Instead, it requires a deliberate and strategic approach by the organization’s leadership. In particular, building a safe environment takes compassionate leadership and creating an intentional culture of inclusion.

• Compassionate leadership requires leading your team from a place of inspiration rather than compulsion, including modeling the behaviors you’d like to promote. Compassionate leadership starts with hearing—and actively listening to—your employees to understand what motivates and drives each of them, and then being open to questions, opinions, and feedback.
• An intentional culture of inclusion requires valuing employees as whole human beings and allowing them to depart from the traditional corporate boilerplate, especially as the workforce becomes more diverse. Psychological safety is created partly by intentionally fostering an environment where all employees are valued for their contributions and treated with respect regardless of any differences that do not impact their work performance, such as hairstyles and fashion, educational institutions attended, or the neighborhood where the employee chooses to live. 

While it takes a lot of work to enhance the psychological safety of an organization, the benefits for everyone—from management to employees to shareholders—make the effort worthwhile because the bottom line is that a psychologically safe organization is resilient, productive, creative, and innovative, with loyal and engaged employees.

If you’d like to discuss specific measures to increase psychological safety in your organization, contact Diedrick Graham, Ph.D., Vice President of Culture and Strategy at The Healy⁺ Group.