Providing psychological safety at work is good for business 

June 13, 2024

Employers who provide for a psychologically safe environment create stronger social bonds and engender greater loyalty to their employees. 

Psychological safety is any employee’s ability to feel like they can be themselves, speak up and take risks without fear in the workplace. 

We've been measuring psychological safety for years. Our Psychological Safety Index is an aggregate measure of psychological safety based on answers to a range of questions. We saw a steady improvement during COVID (2020 and 2021) and then a small decline from 2021 into 2023. During COVID we saw an increased attention to employee needs, which led to increased feelings of psychological safety. 

Digging deeper into the data, we noticed some decreases in the ways people feel psychologically safe: their freedom to use their own judgement in getting their job done, feeling valued as an employee and whether their immediate manager is sensitive to the need for balance between work and personal life. 

Despite these declines, the core psychological safety items have remained fairly stable. 

This tells me that many employers have been creating more open environments where people can speak up. Yet there is still work to do. About one-third of employees don’t feel they can speak their mind without fear of negative consequences and don’t think their company takes a genuine interest in the well-being of employees.  

It’s good for business for companies to work toward closing this gap in employee experience. In fact, 62% of employees who can access mental health benefits through their employer feel well supported.  

Research has shown that for every $1 you spent in helping employees with mental health, you typically get a $4 return on investment through higher productivity, lower absenteeism or more presenteeism and greater commitment to work. It can also lead to lower overall health care costs, as there's a very strong relationship between mental health and physical health. It is well established that mental health problems can cause or exacerbate medical problems and medical problems can cause or exacerbate mental health conditions. 

When thinking about your organization, your mental health environment and workplace psychological safety, there are five key questions to ask: 

1. Are you creating an environment of trust and respect in your organization? Do employees have the ability to speak up? Are actions taken on employee input? Analyze your workplace survey data. People need to feel like they can be themselves at work and that their input is desired and valued.  
2. How is mental health impacting the engagement, safety, resiliency and productivity of your workforce? Looking at your workplace survey data, has your engagement increased relative to some of your mental health questions? Be sure to ask on your surveys about whether employees feel like they are working in an environment that's relatively free from stress and anxiety. Take those questions and really examine the responses.  
3. Are your programs diverse enough to address broad mental health needs and issues from prevention to treatment? It's important that everyone feels like they have representation and can get the help they need. For example, a Black female employee may feel most comfortable with a Black female therapist.  
4. Does your culture address stigma through leadership, communications and manager training? Besides looking at the data, you should also look at your leadership. Are you creating a culture that addresses stigma in your organization? Does your leadership talk about it? Does it come out in your communications? We've seen a strong uptick in companies that do manager mental health trainings that have a greater likelihood of people finding the mental health treatment that they need. The number one means that people find out about an Employee Assistance Program is through managers. 
5. Has your mental health program support evolved? If you have an EAP program that only has three sessions, that's not going to be effective – you need six to eight for short-term treatment. So really look into that. But also look into your utilization. Try to understand why or why not employees are accessing and using the mental health benefits available.