Building a Fearless Culture: Survey Data Highlights Psychological Safety Gap

The healthy transfer of feedback across an organization is vitally important for its function, allowing employees to feel united with their company’s mission. However, the presence of channels for feedback is sometimes not enough. The facilitation of feedback also requires a psychologically safe culture, where employees can present criticism without the fear of consequence.

Psychological safety is a necessary foundation for employees to engage, innovate, and flag problems before they escalate into pervasive risks. Ample data has shown that psychological safety cascades to bolster business outcomes, measurably boosting performance and innovation while also buffering against burnout and turnover.

Although most organizations value psychological safety, new survey data from Brightmine reveals that some struggle to create a culture that fosters it. Company leaders may need to address the gap between psychological safety as an ideal and its practice.

Psychological Safety in The Data

Only 36% of HR representatives say that most employees at their company feel “very safe” to express constructive criticism without the fear of retaliation. Though an additional 49% report that employees feel “somewhat safe”, this suggests that most companies see room for improvement. It also reveals a subset of companies (15%) where criticism is perceived as unsafe.

The lack of psychological safety may cascade from the top down. When reflecting on company leadership, only 38% of HR representatives report that company leaders encourage and accept constructive criticism. At more than one in four companies, the attitude of leadership toward criticism is reportedly “resistant, avoidant, punishing, or dismissive.”

A Skill Gap for Feedback

There’s a strong connection between how safe employees feel to offer constructive criticism and how leaders are likely to respond. Companies with leaders who actively encourage criticism or even just meet it with stable neutrality are much more likely to have employees who feel safe to offer it. This suggests that psychological safety is strongly shaped from the top down based on how leaders behave in response to feedback.

This inconsistent response to feedback may be partly explained by a lack of skills for handling constructive criticism. The data exposed a large training gap on psychological safety (47% of companies have none), which may explain why some leaders do not have the skills to cultivate it in their company’s culture.

Solutions for Psychological Safety

Companies struggling to address psychological safety should focus on developing skills to give and receive feedback, especially at the top level. HR leaders can lead this effort with actionable steps, beginning with the following:

• Provide training: Implement mandatory, scenario-based training focused on the act of receiving criticism, especially for people managers.
• Measure behavior: Build structured metrics to assess leader behavior, such as incorporating 360-degree feedback in performance reviews that audits the reception and response to feedback.
• Build feedback channels: Establish methods for feedback (e.g., pulse surveys, open sessions with leadership) that build a culture encouraging feedback and give leaders opportunities to develop skills to accept constructive criticism.
• Emphasize action: Thoughtfully incorporate and respond to feedback, ensuring that there are practical changes made in response when it is appropriate and that the actions taken in response are publicly discussed.

Takeaway

Psychological safety is not just an ideal; it is a strategic imperative that builds cohesion across an organization. At companies that have identified an issue in this area, HR leaders should prioritize getting buy-in and solving the problem at the highest level.