5 Steps to Ensure Psychological Safety in Hybrid Workplace

The Covid-19 pandemic reshaped the landscape of working from the office to Working from Home. Therefore, it creates a challenge to manage people from a distance, sustain trust, and novel power of dynamics. That’s why the intangible factor highly influences the working of hybrid workplaces during the pandemic such as psychological safety.

However, it’s time to sort out challenges related to future work arrangements, manage people from a distance, and overcome the expected anxieties. Therefore, the managers now need to manage all these and to rethink to enhance the effectiveness of the team.

So, here the blog talks about one of the greatest factors “Psychological Safety” that highly contributes to the effectiveness of the team.

Effects of new working forms on Psychological safety

Psychological safety at work is explained as a belief system that a person can speak or share thoughts without risk of humiliation or punishment. It is significant in team effectiveness because it maximizes its productivity.

Moreover, it’s a key contributor to healthy group dynamics, great innovations, rich-quality decision making, accurate execution, and efficient interpersonal relationships within an organization.

Psychological security is the belief that you will not be punished or humiliated for talking about ideas, questions, worries or mistakes.

You have heard this before: Treat others as you would like to be treated. When it comes to psychological security, the opposite is true. Treat others as they would like to be treated. Take the time to ask your teammates and direct reports on what they prefer regarding things like check-in frequency, communication style, type of response, etc.

“If you’re a great manager or leader, you should not respond to what you want, you should respond to what others want.”  Taking personal risks becomes much less risky if you know what others want and how they choose to be treated.

The safety of the challenger meets the need to improve things. You are confident in speaking out and challenging the status quo when you think there is an opportunity for change or improvement.

Additionally, if your organization reflects a strong amy edmondson psychological safety even in the most critical and factual context. Then you will be available to be protected from great fails. For example, your staff is able to speak up to avoid the execution of a wrong operation. Similarly, your staff also speak confidently to correct you before sharing wrong data during public speaking.

However, most of the organizational failures reflect the lack of the fearless organization within an organization. That’s why to avoid failures and embarrassments you must ensure psychological safety within your organization.

Interestingly, hybrid working and working from home creates some challenges that also include psychological safety definition.  That’s why organizations are trying to ensure openness and make healthy criticism against work content.

But here the issue is that hybrid working and working from home blurred the boundary between the personal life of employees and work life. So, it is important for an organization to consider the personal circumstances of employees before making coordination decisions, scheduling meetings, and staffing.

The Thing Need to Understand

Because maybe one employee is struck by some personal issues like taking care of a widowed parent, assisting a child in school assignments, and due to some health issues.  That’s why such employees need different working hours as compared to others.

Similarly, each employee faces a different situation at home that absolutely differs from others. That’s why it’s a greater challenge nowadays to ensure psychological safe talks about the issue to maintain a balance between work and life.   

In the same way, the topic is also challenging to discuss because it includes the personal aspects of employees such as their values, identities, and choices. That’s why it’s a little bit risky and a different challenge to deal with as compared to ethical and legal standpoints.

Organizations Need to Revise Things

In such kind of changing circumstances, it is strategically not good to keep doing things as usual. Now it’s time to discuss the off-limits topic jointly with the employees. It includes health-risk comfort levels, family issues, spouses’ challenges, child care, and other personal and family-related issues.

These topics are important to discuss jointly to efficiently schedule and organize the hybrid work. Interestingly, the organization should also keep in mind that once the working landscape will reverse to office. Then these topics would be again considered as off-limits topics.

That’s why it is important for an organization to revise things regularly based on trends and circumstances. If they will not revise their approaches it will be quite difficult for them to meet the challenges of coordination and scheduling things.

However, it’s a fact that hybrid working or working from home increases the managerial complexity. Now they have faced more coordination challenges with employees and among employees.

Steps to ensure psychological safety

Amazingly, the blog shares some significant steps that will absolutely help you in maintaining the psychological safety in hybrid working. Therefore, it’s a fact that managers feel risky to ask about personal details due to many things. Such as due to the legal policies of not asking personal questions, employee privacy, and potential for being bias.

However, considering these risks related to personal details is also not a solution. Although, one of the most significant things is that to create such an environment that highly ensures psychological safety.

So, in the presence of psychological safety in the workplace, the employees will be encouraged to share details about their personal situations that clash with the work location, timing, and scheduling. It will also create trust in employees in making the right decision based on their personal circumstances and working needs.

In this way, it can be possible for employers and employees to create a balance between their personal life and working life. So, google psychological safety is a need of time to be enabled and sustained to ensure productivity and to overcome the challenges of a hybrid workplace.

Because just limiting the organization to the words “just trust me” is not workable. That’s why implement effective strategies to ensure your employees’ productivity and coordination.

So, here are 5 steps that will definitely help you to create a working environment with high standards of psychological safety. Let’s read them.

1 Initiate a discussion on it

The first and foremost thing is to have a discussion about the issue with the team. It will assist them to identify their challenges. Along with this, they will also recognize your challenges as well.

In simple words, the discussion will help you to share the problem’s ownership. Framing the problems through such discussion will help you to sort out new ways of working efficiently. Firstly, you should clearly mention that things at stake.  

Clearly explains that to get the work done is as significant as previously for their mission, customers, and for their careers. But it’s time to put extra creativity, hard work, management, and responsibility into it. Because without it the things would not work as in the past.

Not only your employees should understand the needs of the time but also you too. Being a team, it’s equally important for employers and employees to be transparent and clear about the needs of the team and work. Along with jointly taking the responsibility to succeed.

2 Be Practical in your words

After discussion, you must lead the way. Because words are nothing if not implemented through actions. Most importantly, in the context of psychological safety meaning words, are cheap. Just the practically implemented words matters a lot.

Interestingly, there are a lot of stories and news about employers who asked for openness from their employees. But in reality, they lack to protect it and ensure it. So, it is very important to implement it to avoid embarrassment and mistakes.

Therefore, the first step to ensure your seriousness about 4 stages of psychological safety you must also share your own constraints and personal challenges related to hybrid working. So, you must start from yourself to take the risk of personal privacy.

It is possible you just need to be humble and vulnerable and must be open about your own challenges. Along with the way you think about it to manage it effectively.

If you are not willing to be open, then how you can expect from your employees?

3 Take Small Steps to build trust

Nothing happens in hours or days, everything needs time. Similarly, it will also take time to build trust and creating psychological safety in the workplace culture. So, don’t expect employees that they will share about the riskiest and personal challenges soon after your words.

Even in fully developed psychological safety at work cultures employees hesitates to discuss about their personal struggles at home. So, initiate with small steps of disclosures about yourself and then try to encourage others to make disclosures about them as well.

Interestingly, it’s up to you how can you build your employees’ confidence. Do convey to your employees repeatedly that sharing is not embarrassing and something that will be penalized.  

If employees will not discuss about their personal contains at home, how organizations will help out them to solve or to manage them?

4 Share Some Encouraging Real-Life Examples

As we discussed that employees will not immediately respond to it. Along with this, they are also not able to assume all the benefits of sharing their personal challenges at that time.

So, here you can help them by sharing some interesting and encouraging real-life examples. In this way, they will be able to understand it in a better way. You can also take the help of your marketing tactics to market the benefits of psychological safety.

You have to convey something positive about google psychological safety that will definitely motivate them. Such as psychological safety enhances transparency and highly helps the team to develop new working arrangements that benefit both employees and the organization.

In this way, you will be able to share the outputs of disclosure made to you privately. It will ensure the psychological safety google of the one who shares it and the rest by motivating them. So, here all you need is communication and marketing tactics.

The goal is to provide evidence and share the benefits of collaboration rather than sharing the information.

5 Observe Deeply

However, it’s a common perception that 4 stages of psychological safety needs a lot of time to build but takes seconds to end it. Most employees don’t share about their working constraints because they thought they will be not received well.

Because when employees take courage to speak up, but in response, they are shot down, this thing minimizes the chance of sharing next time. So, the organization or employers should be vigilant to observe such situations to push forward the employee’s courage.

It’s quite a complicated job to do because it needs skills and tactics. Here you need to teach employees to frame such a situation with positive remarks and in an understanding way. For example, “We miss your presence, but we understand your challenges. Let us know if you need any help from us.”

Along with this, you must also be able to observe those who inappropriately behave against the shared personal information.