Organisational Culture: a review of Psychological Safety's impacts

One of the influences on organisational culture is the climate that employees and managers feel and impact during their activities. Among the various elements that influence a company’s climate is the low or high level of Psychological Safety.

When does psychological safety happen? When team members are free, without fearing possible retaliations or verbally ridiculed, to

• express alternative views of strategies, tactics

• release feedbacks

• receive appreciation for their critical thinking

• be rewarded for innovative ideas and propositions to be further tested

• (Innovation funnel)

• be authorised and elicited to experiment with solutions and innovation within boundaries

• sharing knowledge with peers, working for the company’s cause/vision/purpose

• signalling errors, mistakes that come from knowledge applied and experimentation (double loop learning)

It may be overlooked during this period between crisis(?) and recession(?) the consequences (not unintended ones) of not creating and nurturing Psychological safety:

* Limited ideas or solutions to be used

* A limited number of risks to consider and manage

* Lack of focus and initiative: When employees feel unsafe, they’re less likely to take the initiative and focus on their work.

* Higher levels of stress with physical and mental health issues.

* Communication problems: Employees may be reluctant to fully communicate when there is a lack of psychological safety.

* Turnover: Feeling unsafe makes employees look for new jobs.

We understand that connecting and visualising psychological safety’s benefits, challenges, and risks is not immediate. We also understand the implications and where to start to follow a path or roadmap are what is expected frm Consultants.

Our framework, CAST © has been built with the idea that if we use the classic approach to analyse a single problem and focus on its resolution, we miss the cause/effect logic between elements. CAST © shows the problem/s in one area and the most relevant implications in the others.

So that a solution proposed can consider all the steps with an eye to all the effects.

Why? Overall implications are the repercussions in the long term for all the stakeholders. So, executives can also consider the impact of their decision-making outputs in the longer term.