The need to create psychological safety in the workplace has never been more urgent. A decade ago, Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the top driver of team success for all employees.
Psychological safety effectively functions as an equaliser and is effective at improving the workplace and reducing attrition for women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ employees, people with disabilities, and people from disadvantageous backgrounds.
According to our recent Psychological Safety Levels the Playing Field for Employees report, globally, 12% of employees with the lowest levels of psychological safety said they were likely to quit within a year. But when psychological safety is high, only 3% of employees are at risk of quitting.
Employees in South Africa who feel safe to speak up in the workplace and take risks without fear of being blamed or criticised report feeling 2.1 times more motivated, 3.2 times happier, and 3.4 times more enabled to reach their full potential at work. When leaders successfully build this feeling—known as “psychological safety”—among their workforce, attrition risk is greatly reduced.
Based on a survey of 28,000 professionals across 16 countries, including South Africa, our report shows that empathetic leadership—a style of leadership that demonstrates an understanding of and respect for the perspectives, emotions, and life situations of team members—is a key driver of psychological safety and its resulting benefits.
Collective buy-in from the team is important, but leaders have an outsized impact when it comes to building psychological safety. They set the tone by being role models and signaling what behaviours will be rewarded and what won’t be tolerated. Psychological safety can flourish only if it’s driven from the top.
Psychological safety is especially important for diverse groups
The positive effects of psychological safety are particularly pronounced among women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ employees, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
When leaders successfully create psychological safety at work, retention increases by more than four times for women and for employees who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of colour (BIPOC); by five times for people with disabilities; and by six times for LGBTQ+ employees. This is compared with an increase of two times in retention for men not in those groups (that is, white, non-LGBTQ+ men with no disability).
In comparison in South Africa, retention increases by five times for women and 4.7 times for BIPOC employees; by 5.7 times for people with disabilities and 6.5 times for LGBTQ+ employees. For straight, cisgender men with no disability retention increases by 3.6 times.
Conversely, in environments where psychological safety is low, members of diversity groups have a higher risk of attrition relative to other employees. For example, in South Africa, 23% of LGBTQ+ employees in the bottom 30% of the psychological safety spectrum are at risk of attrition, compared with just 14% of straight and cisgender employees. By comparison, for those in the top 30% of psychological safety, the attrition risk gap between groups narrows, resulting in a 3% attrition risk for all.
What empathetic leaders do right
So how can organisations create a psychologically safe work environment?
Building a culture of psychological safety starts at the top.
It all comes down to empathetic leadership. Empathetic leaders approach their teams with a mindset of openness, growth, and authenticity while setting up systems at their companies to embed psychological safety into everyday team practices.
Psychological safety does not mean that employees don’t need to perform at a high level—in fact, we find that in a psychologically safe environment, employees are more motivated and more ambitious.
In South Africa, members of some traditionally defined diversity groups experience outsized psychological safety from empathetic leadership, indicating that this leadership style is an essential lever for building psychological safety.
Tactics that leaders can pursue to cultivate psychological safety, include:
- Formalise time for sharing and learning. At the start of meetings, carve out a few minutes to let people engage with one another as humans first.
- Hold regular team reflections, or “retrospectives.” Provide opportunities to discuss what the team is doing well and how to improve.
- Challenge ideas, not people. When delivering feedback, ensure that any criticism focuses on the quality of the work, not the person who did the work.
- Be open and authentic. Leaders should candidly share their own mistakes and lessons learned with the team.
With empathetic leadership, organisations can unlock the full value of their diversity, equity, and inclusion ambitions by increasing employee happiness and motivation, boosting team innovation and creativity, and eliminating the disproportionate risk of attrition among diverse employee groups.
Rudi van Blerk, partner and Africa People and Organisation practice lead at Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
