Why do We Foster Psychological Safety?

By Tom Geraghty and Jade Garratt

It’s easy, when considering why we should work on psychological safety, to go straight to the organisational benefits: improved learning, greater innovation, higher quality products or services and lower cost of failure to give just a few examples. We might then extend our reasoning to include the wellbeing of the people who work there – recognising that psychological safety is linked to lower stress, higher engagement and fundamentally a greater enjoyment of work. It feels good to feel psychologically safe.

But there’s a deeper reason to foster psychological safety. One that isn’t rooted in metrics, outputs, or performance indicators.

We don’t just do this work because it benefits the organisation. We do it because it’s the right thing to do.

In a sense, we have two sets of goals: supporting the success of the organisation and its mission or purpose, and the more human aim of creating a more just, safer and better world. Somewhat serendipitously, fostering psychological safety contributes to both these aims. But we mustn’t fall into the trap of justifying this work solely through organisational ROI; it’s also important to acknowledge we may also do it because we care fundamentally about essential human dignity and fairness. We may even consider it a human right.

This trap isn’t limited to practice – we’ve seen it show up in research too. Some academic work begins with an implicit assumption that the value of psychological safety lies solely in what it can do for business outcomes. These assumptions inevitably shape the research questions, methodology and conclusions. It’s how we end up with high-profile studies suggesting that “too much” psychological safety might be a problem – often missing the broader ethical and relational context.When we centre only on organisational performance, we risk overlooking the moral imperative: that everyone deserves to feel safe, valued, and able to contribute. 

But that’s just our perspective. So last week, we asked our wonderful Psych Safety community – people actively working on and interested in psychological safety – what they think. We invited people to choose their top three reasons for working on psychological safety from a list of twelve options, drawn from what we most commonly see in practice and research.

These reasons for fostering psychological safety emerged as the top three responses:

• A moral imperative: it’s the right thing to do
• Improved team communication and collaboration
• Greater employee wellbeing and mental health

The most common reasons for fostering psychological safety

What’s striking is that among all the possible reasons, the moral imperative – doing it because it’s the right thing to do – emerged clearly in the top three.

This is something we rarely see centred in academic literature or organisational metrics, but it clearly matters deeply to the people doing this work. For many of us, psychological safety isn’t just a means to an end; it’s an ethical commitment to creating environments where people are treated with care, fairness and respect. 

It’s a powerful reminder that human values belong at the heart of how we shape our workplaces. Our data suggests that many people overwhelmingly prioritise people‐centric and team‐centric reasons for fostering psychological safety over hard‐edged business metrics. However, it’s worth noting that the survey sample consisted primarily (maybe entirely) of people who are already invested in fostering psychological safety – not those who are yet to be convinced. 

An interesting point is that the top three emerged quite early, and remained the top three shifting in position slightly, as response numbers grew. This suggests reasonably strong reliability, because the top three remained true at all sample sizes up to the survey end. 

Co-occurrence of the responses:

• “Moral imperative” & “Team communication” co-occurred in 20 respondents.
• “Team communication” & “Wellbeing” co-occurred in 23 respondents.
• “Moral imperative” & “Wellbeing” co-occurred in 13 respondents.

Outside of the top three, we can see that “A moral imperative” (46 total picks) often comes with “Inclusion, equity & diversity” (16 respondents). The fact that these reasons of “moral imperative,” “team communication,” and “wellbeing” all overlap heavily (i.e. over 20 respondents picking any two at once) suggests these top three are conceptually linked in people’s minds. This could imply that people who value psychological safety on moral grounds also tend to value its impact on collaboration, mental health, and inclusion and diversity.

Interestingly, other mid-tier reasons such as “innovation,” “errors & failures” and “quality,” also cluster together: many people selected two or three of those in combination, which suggests that these concepts are also conceptually linked for those people.

Conclusion

Our findings make one thing clear: while organisational benefits (such as innovation, performance, quality and safety) certainly matter, the most powerful motivators for fostering psychological safety are because it’s the right thing to do, it improves team communication, and fosters greater wellbeing. In other words, practitioners are more likely to view psychological safety as an ethical commitment, not merely another lever for organisational performance.

As we design programs, policies, or research initiatives around psychological safety, we should remember that appealing to people’s sense of fairness and human dignity can be just as (or even more) compelling than citing Return On Investment (ROI), productivity gains or health and safety. Ultimately, we should bear in mind the conviction that we all deserve to feel able to speak up, whether or not it improves organisational outcomes.

Notes on data collection:

The sample comprised of psychological safety newsletter readers, community members, and social media followers – a global and diverse group of psychological safety enthusiasts, practitioners and researchers. In total, 78 respondents completed the survey, out of 165 who clicked on it. We didn’t collect any other data for this survey other than optional email addresses. The list of options was randomised for each visit, in an effort to remove any bias from respondents selecting certain answers based on position. IP addresses were used to prevent multiple answers from the same device. 

The next Psychological Safety Research Pulse:

Now, we’re asking “Typically, how familiar are people in your organisation with the concept of psychological safety?“

See our Psychological Research Pulse page for past and current research pulse surveys and analyses.

Psychological Safety Online Workshops

Deepen your expertise in psychological safety

Whether you’re guiding teams, shaping culture, or supporting others to do the same, our Complete Psychological Safety Course: Train the Trainer is helps you create psychologically safer, higher performing and more equitable workplaces.

Join our next round of open enrolment online workshops – trusted by leaders, trainers, facilitators, and consultants around the world – to:

• Understand the theory and real-world value of psychological safety
• Learn practical tools to build and maintain it in teams and organisations
• Use the Psychological Safety Action Pack to measure, grow and sustain it
• Gain the confidence to deliver workshops of your own
• Connect with a global community of like-minded people who care about making work better
• Earn CPD hours and Credly badges to evidence your development

Our flagship programme includes six interactive 2.5-hour online workshops. Attend the full series to earn your Psych Safety Train the Trainer badge, or pick and choose the sessions that best fit your role and interests.

“Genuinely one of the most thought-provoking and practical courses I’ve attended in a long time.”

Find out more and book your place here: https://psychsafety.com/psychological-safety-training-for-individuals/

Psychological Safety in Practice 

“Beyond the Myth of Individual Responsibility”

Rosa Antonia Carrillo’s excellent white paper, “Beyond the Myth of Individual Responsibility,” challenges the belief that workplace safety hinges solely on each person “owning” their own safety. She proposes a relationship‐centred approach that recognises how people’s interactions, group processes, and broader social systems shape safety outcomes. By shifting the focus from individuals to interdependent teams and organisational structures, it is possible to build a culture in which employees feel valued, psychologically safe, and motivated to protect each other.

There’s an awful lot I like about Rosa’s paper, including the emphasis on de-individualising organisational safety (and conversely, success), the dynamics of collectivist cultures on safety, emphasising shared governance, and recognising that context drives behaviour (think HOP). Worth a read.

Power, hierarchy and voice

The social hierarchy, power, status and influence chapter in the open access 6th edition (2025) edition of The Handbook of Social Psychology is worth a read (amongst the other chapters too). We talk a lot about power, and there are some powerful statements here – including that hierarchy and rank means that those at the “top” are given many more opportunities to speak up, whilst those further down are expected to remain quiet. Even when at an equal hierarchical rank, higher social status endows people with a greater allowance of voice. People with more power are more likely to speak first, and speak more, than those with less.

How Psychological Safety Consensus Emerges Over Time

We shouldn’t blindly trust the findings of academic research, especially when it doesn’t appear to reflect reality, or indeed, other research.

This paper “Examining How Psychological Safety Consensus Emerges Over Time” at facer value appears to show that whilst psychological safety develops over time through consensus emergence, over longer periods there is a decline in the average level of psychological safety.

The teams in this study were composed of undergraduates working on a single semester-long course. In practice, teams in the workplace have more long-term and stable membership, more formal role definitions, values and expectations, as well as organisational norms and support. Students also experience competition between peers as the demands of coursework and exams ramp up (yes, some organisations also carry out forced ranking too, but not good ones), driving down psychological safety in ways that wouldn’t occur in professional settings.

The decline in psychological safety over time in this study far more likely reflects context-specific factors, competition between “team” members, and sample limitations far more than reflecting a real-world universal team dynamic.

This week’s poem:

Extract from The Prelude, Book 1, William Wordsworth

Love is enough: though the World be a-waning,
My own voice cheered me, and, far more, the mind’s
Internal echo of the imperfect sound;
To both I listened, drawing from them both
A cheerful confidence in things to come.