Creating Psychological Safety in a Hybrid Workplace

Psychological safety, a term coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, refers to an environment where employees feel safe to speak up, take risks, voice concerns, and contribute ideas without fear of ridicule or, more importantly, retribution. In a hybrid setting, where face-to-face interactions are limited and digital communication dominates, ensuring psychological safety as a business norm requires intentional effort, from leaders to set the tone, and managers to foster the culture every day. 

Hybrid workplaces presents a number of challenges when it comes to creating psychological safety, which leaders must acknowledge and address in order to create the foundation of safety, belonging and mattering for individuals.  

Trust is the cornerstone of psychological safety. Building trust takes time and in hybrid environments, random chats, impromptu meetings and lunches together are less frequent, meaning building trust can take longer. Trust is critical to ensure people are giving real feedback, feel safe to speak up and, importantly, admit when they have made a mistake. Leaders need to focus on activities that build trust and connection for their people. Regular one-to-one check ins, informal coffee chats, a buddy system, offsite team building opportunities and “town hall” meetings at regular intervals are all great ways to build connection.  

Cultivating an environment where people can ‘fail’, where it’s not seen as a ‘failure’ but instead as part of the journey towards finding the right answer - an environment where people feel safe. This is no easy feat as we are conditioned from an early age through the education system that your answer is either right or wrong. Encouraging people to explore alternative routes and experiment with different options also feeds innovation and creativity. When this mindset is embraced, people feel psychologically safe by default, empowering them to take risks and drive extraordinary results.

Getting communication right is a critical piece of the puzzle. It can be all too easy for people to rely heavily on emails, Slack, Teams chat etc. While they all play a role, it is important to ensure they do not always become the default method of communication. Messages can be lost, misinterpreted or misunderstood, creating issues which could have been avoided with dialogue. And yes, this is a really basic point, but it’s a real issue that shows up often within organisations, creating unnecessary animosity, impacting productivity and damaging trust.  

Encouraging people to speak up in the workplace is essential, ensuring that quieter people also have an opportunity to participate and feel safe to do so. A key practical challenge with hybrid working is inclusion - ensuring that people connecting remotely have as much of an opportunity to speak, input and be heard as those together in person. Upskilling people in meeting facilitation and effective communication can really help with this challenge.  

In a hybrid work environment, psychological safety is more important than ever. By prioritising clear communication, relationship-building, and creating trust within the workforce, leaders can create the right conditions for employees to feel psychologically safe, that they belong within the culture, and that they matter to the organisation, no matter where or how they work.  

We would love to know how your organisation is fostering psychological safety in a hybrid setting?