Psychological Safety Levels the Playing Field 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. New BCG research shows that it is also particularly effective at improving the workplace and reducing attrition for women, people of color, LGBTQ+ employees, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Psychological safety effectively functions as an equalizer—enabling diverse and disadvantaged employee groups to achieve the same levels of workplace satisfaction as their more advantaged colleagues.

So how can organizations 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.

With empathetic leadership, organizations can finally unlock the full value of their diversity, equity, and inclusion ambitions by increasing employee happiness and motivation, boosting team innovation and creativity, and eliminating the disproportionate risk of attrition among diverse employee groups.”

If you read through here, you understand why we are excited about this research, which ties Psychological safety to retention and workplace satisfaction.

The Services of 1for2 Social Innovation support organizations striving to Address problems directly. Employees need to feel safe questioning ideas, policies, and practices, even if this creates conflict or disagreement.

We support you fostering a culture of productive disagreement and debate, you can encourage deeper levels of understanding and trust and deal with issues before they escalate.

And, if situations escalate, we’re there to support your employees by guiding them towards ‘adult’ conversations or reporting transgressive behavior. All of these steps will lead to a more professional and human-centered culture.

Now, visit the BCG website to read the full article or download the .PDF here for later use.