Far from just being a health and wellbeing measure, psychological safety is a lever for productivity that allows employees to speak up about the issues undermining performance. Only by making it safe for employees to open up about the reasons driving burnout, fatigue and anxiety can employers better address the underlying issues driving poor mental health.
Mental health absence is continuing to rise, with burnout, fatigue, anxiety and depression being the four main drivers behind this. According to AXA’s latest Mind Health Report1, a third (32%) of people now have at least one mental health condition and sick leave related to mental health problems is on the rise (27% versus 23% the year prior). Psychological disorders are the leading cause of long-term sick leave – and for those under 40, this represents an alarming one in two sick leaves.
Worryingly, although employers increasingly want employees to speak up about the issues undermining their mental health, many employees lack the confidence to do so. Younger workers and the squeezed ‘sandwich generation’ struggling with both child and eldercare duties are particularly at risk. When employees feel their voices are unheard and their opinions undervalued, they may hesitate to share their thoughts and feelings, fearing dismissal or lack of acknowledgment. This dynamic can stifle open communication and inhibits a thriving workplace culture.
Psychological safety may seem like a straightforward concept, essentially referring to feeling safe to open up and take interpersonal risks, and not fear being put down, or being not listened to and invalidated. However, in practice creating such an environment takes effort and dedication.
Psychological safety as a lever for productivity
As Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson observes in her book The Fearless Organisation[2],
organisations where employees feel safe to voice concerns are not only healthier, but higher performing.
For example, aviation crews that stimulated more openness in cockpit communication were able to cut the number of crashes, while a Google study found psychological safety to be the key ingredient amongst best-performing teams. In this sense, psychological safety can’t just be presented to leaders as a health and safety measure, it’s also a performance lever. This is important because creating a culture of trust and embedding health and wellbeing into the core of the business takes commitment from everyone.
It isn’t about encouraging individuals to call in sick every time they feel stressed or anxious about something, it’s about encouraging them to talk about what’s undermining their wellbeing so that this can be addressed to help them stay in work.
Our Mind Health Study highlights that more than one in four working Brits have carers duties, and 62% of this group said they needed additional personal time off, but more than half didn’t get that type of support. Why then is it sometimes easier for an employee to call in sick than challenge a meeting being scheduled after their school run or a hospital appointment? Or so difficult for another employee to challenge a workload that means they don’t feel able to stop for lunch anymore.
When a team member goes off on long term sick leave, it impacts on many different aspects of that team. Some worry about their colleague, others fear that the workload will increase, while others worry that they will be next as the works keeps increasing and they are worried if they speak up, it will not reflect positively on them. The manager may also worry that productivity will be negatively impacted and the consequences of this. Inevitably this will lead to more employees needing to go on sick leave, and the cycle will continue. This is why it does matter and why such open conversations are important.
How do you create psychological safety?
Unfortunately, you can’t just tell people to feel safe, and only providing a one-off training or webinar won’t automatically create a different culture. It requires a multi-layered approach and a strategy that drives trust, openness, and creates an environment where individuals can feel safe. At a time when many organisations are tightening their belts and making redundancies, the need for creating a culture of psychological safety has never been more important.
When we think about the role of a manager, supporting employees wellbeing is part of that role, however some feel that such conversations can be challenging. There is often a fear of saying the wrong thing or overstepping a boundary. By educating managers on how to facilitate open conversations about the barriers to good mental health, organisations can fundamentally change the workplace culture in a way that allows people to thrive, and not just survive at work.
Equipping managers with easily accessible resources, training and support is vital to foster a supportive environment where employees feel valued and connected. This in turn could also help to build more meaningful connections in the workplace.
Another strategy that can be adopted is change the focus of internal meetings throughout the year. For many the focus is on KPIs and performance and having conversations as a team regarding how people are feeling are often lost. Crucially, when employees feel able to open up about challenges, and how this makes them feel, these need to be heard but also acted upon.
For many organisations this won’t come naturally. Employees may be inclined to suppress their true thoughts and managers may feel uncomfortable asking questions outside of day-to-day business priorities. It’s therefore important to remind managers that they can often use the mental health resources in place, such as an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) to roleplay talking to employee who is struggling. Or just to get the support they need to manage their own mental health while learning to manage the mental health of others.
The key is to have a robust strategy that incorporates psychological safety across the organisation so that it can be embedded and lasts. This requires all levels of leadership role-modelling and actively seeking feedback from employees and taking action. As a senior leader, if you can be open and honest about any mistakes you may have made or how you can also feel overwhelmed, this demonstrates to others that it’s acceptable to have open conversations and encourages others to speak up. Senior leaders also need to take a top-down approach towards creating psychological safety with their team. For example, by spending time with junior employees to understand what their working day actually looks like.
Wider psychological safety benefits
By increasing psychological safety across the organisation, you can also make people feel safer when it comes to using mental health support. This increases the likelihood of people accessing support earlier, instead of waiting until they are in significant emotional distress or unable to attend or perform at work.
On the whole, employees don’t just want help to recover, they want personalised, easily accessible support to stay healthy. Advances in digital technology mean employees are increasingly comfortable accessing self-help tools and online resources, to proactively manage their own health journey. These can reduce the need for counselling further down the line, with resources on everything from improving sleep to reducing anxiety levels.
In the event that some kind of talking therapy is still needed, these digital tools can also be used to allow employees to select what sort of therapist they would like to see. Whether that’s someone the same gender as them, or someone with a particular area of expertise, such as dealing with relationship issues.
The overall aim must be to buck the current downward mental health trend by creating a workplace environment where people can thrive. Whether that’s giving someone the confidence to admit when they need to leave early to look after a sick child, or the courage to challenge a deadline that will do more harm than good in the long run.
To foster an environment where innovation and collaboration can flourish, it’s essential to actively encourage and validate employee input. By creating a culture of trust, that supports employees on a daily basis, employers now have an opportunity to reduce the stem of mental health absence far more effectively than a one-off annual stress awareness day can ever hope to achieve. It takes dedication and clear strategy that’s embedded across an organisation, but in doing so you can help create a workforce that thrives.
Dr Imren Sterno is a lead consultant clinical psychologist for AXA Health
How can AXA Health help?
By helping you to provide employees and managers with the right support at the right time, we can help you to reduce mental health issues in the following ways:
Seminars and workshops – to make open and safe conversations a part of your organisational culture
Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) – for employees to access immediate access to personalised wellbeing support on any issues affecting them
Mental health strategy development – to help you devise an annual strategy for creating a workplace culture where people can thrive
For more information, please visit our website.
1 AXA 2025 mind health report – The AXA Mind Health Index survey was conducted between October 8th to November 11th 2024 in 16 countries among representative samples of the population aged 18-75 in each country (1,000 in each).
2 Psychological safety, the art of encouraging teams to be open, Financial Times, 2023
