Employee engagement, innovation, peak performance – these are the hallmarks of any successful organisation. The secret ingredient that unlocks them all is psychological safety – the willingness to take interpersonal risks, speak up with ideas and feedback, and admit mistakes – and the good news is it can be measured. This often-overlooked factor empowers teams to thrive. Measuring and understanding where your teams sit in terms of psychological safety can provide invaluable insights into the inner workings of your organisation, and where there is room for improvement.
Measuring Psychological Safety
- Quantitative Methods: Organisation-wide surveys, ranging from simple questionnaires to comprehensive diagnostic tools have been the most common quantitative method for measuring culture, engagement and aspects of psychological safety. These however are commonly annual surveys and ‘top down’ meaning results are filtered by management and by the time they reach the team members are often out of date and/or not actioned.
- Qualitative Methods: Whilst focus groups and interviews could provide rich insights into employees’ perceptions of psychological safety, team members often feel reluctant to be open and honest as this approach does not allow for confidentiality and anonymity and hence may not get to the ‘route cause’ of low employee well-being and performance.
- Real-time Pulse Checks: Regular, brief pulse checks, such as those in the PSI Program, provide real-time data on psychological safety, inclusivity, and psychosocial risk factors, identifying improvement areas and enabling timely interventions which promote an adaptive team culture and performance.
Integrating Psychological Safety into Team Strategies
Business plans which include psychological safety measures at team level allow an organisation to ‘keep a finger on the pulse’ of every team ‘real-time’ and address risk areas and concerns before they impact team morale and performance.
The PSI tool is a valid and reliable tech-enabled solution that provides anonymous and confidential insights, allowing leaders to benchmark and understand their organisation’s psychological safety and risk profile as well as immediately action any gaps and improvement opportunities with their teams.
Key Benefits of Psychological Safety:
Gallop research shows that shifting psychological safety from 3/10 to just 6/10 results in the following benefits:
• 27% reduction in turnover
• 40% reduction in safety incidents
• 12% increase in productivity.
Amy, C. Edmondson. “The Fearless Organisation”. HBS. 2019. Wiley.
Key Features of the PSI Team Performance program:
Leadership and Team Commitment
Leaders must be empowered to objectively measure psychological safety and psychosocial hazards ‘real time’ and manage these proactively with their teams, as a ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ approach.
Identifying Gaps and Opportunities
Assessing existing psychological safety levels, finding development opportunities, and incorporating these insights into team BAU ensures team performance is always on the radar.
Skill Development
Immediate action and change enabled by micro-learnings in communication, empathy, sharing ideas and concerns, giving feedback, and others empowers and builds employee capability and EQi to take interpersonal risks and nurture psychological safety within and outside of their teams.
Improve Your Teams’ Culture and Performance with DataDrivesInsight.com
Psychological safety is a critical foundation of organisational success. By accurately measuring psychological safety and inclusivity, integrating it into team BAU, organisations can enhance employee well-being, improve performance, increase resilience, and retain top talent.
Create an account on the DataDrivesInsight.com member portal to access exclusive educational resources, and learn more about our suite of solutions. To learn more about how to measure and enhance psychological safety, well-being and performance within your teams, contact us.
