It’s very important to understand the sentiment of employees around three distinct factors of psychological safety & mental health: clear leadership & expectations, physiological & social support, and workload management, especially in times of high uncertainty around, when organizations are anticipating disruption. As evident from its name, this index is a combination of psychological safety & mental health, the former is an enabler, while the latter is a hygiene element. Both of them are affected, in times of uncertainty & un-anticipated changes, and hence, it’s important for organizations to keep check on these, ensuring embeddedness & work-ability of the workforce.
Also see, Google reWork’s research on Psychological Safety (& team effectiveness) and The Brew’s works on building high performance teams.
Why bother about measuring psychological safety & mental health ??
In uncertain times, especially, when organizations have undergone unanticipated disruption, it is imperative to measure the confidence, conviction & trust, to ascertain the team’s preparedness in fulfilling the objectives, post unanticipated changes. A lot of Leaders & Managers will think they have a good feel for their team’s psychological safety. But it’s surprising what you’ll learn when you actually measure it. Each team member has their own comfort level and communication style, so everyone’s experience is personal, and it’s naive to generalize the conjectures of one’s own feelings to others.
The exercise of analyzing your team’s psychological safety & mental health is a highly eye-opening & reflective process. For Leaders & Managers, it’s the lead indicator of the work & workforce repercussions to follow, post organizations having undergone unanticipated/undesirable changes.
