Balancing Stress in the Workplace and How to Benefit From It
Is There Too Much Psychological Safety?
Whilst the focus on workplace health and safety in recent years has correctly highlighted the importance of psychological safety, eg feel safe to speak up and be treated with respect, advice from the Human Resources Centre at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn Uni) have issued a cautionary note.
“More psychological safety may not always be better”
Professor Peter Cappelli, of “Penn Uni” explains some jobs involve repetitive and standardised tasks where we want employees to strictly follow rules and not take risks, especially where we cannot afford mistakes.
For example, feeling psychologically safe is important when we want nurses to speak up and help figure out how to improve medical practices, but once they go onto the hospital floor to take care of patients, we don’t want them to take risks or implement their own new procedures.
So, how much psychological safety is useful? Studies typically focus on average effects, but psychological safety is not “either or”, but specific to each individual and the workplace circumstances.
Professor Cappelli reports that when businesses move from poor to average psychological safety it invariably helps, but when businesses move from average to high focus on psychological safety, they found performance actually declined.
Performance declines when there is too much focus on psychological safety.
It is suggested that where bosses push the “no bad ideas here” view encourages people to take risks when they shouldn’t. A more fundamental problem involves “mistakes will not be held against me” principle. While it makes perfect sense to tolerate mistakes when we want workers to innovate and be flexible, it does not make sense in jobs where we need everyone to follow the rules, conform to standards and not take risks.
“Workers need feedback on performance, whether good or bad”
There should be consequences for poor performance, as agreed by psychological safety experts, but this point is often overlooked in workplaces where psychological safety is the pre-eminent focus.
“Many businesses push psychological safety way too broadly”
For example, if your team reports there is zero chance they would be held accountable for making mistakes, Psychological safety would be rated very high. That’s fine if the job involves taking calculated risks eg insurance underwriter or stockbrokers, but not OK for most jobs.
Professor Cappelli explains the negative effects of “excessive” psychological safety eg “I am not responsible for my performance, and I will not be criticised for poor performance”, can be off-set where there is strong group responsibility to achieve agreed performance and targets.
The dilemma for frontline supervisors is how they balance:
Achieving business performance and goals and holding workers accountable, with
Creating psychologically safe work environments.
The conclusions of the Penn Uni study is that “excessive” focus on ensuring everyone is totally comfortable and never fearing criticism for poor work performance is actually harmful.
*Based on article in The Weekend Australian 17 February 2024
