Ensuring Psychological Safety at Work

Psychological safety according to the Fair Work Act 2019 means that the employee's mental health is considered in the workplace and strategies are implemented so they are mentally safe.  Often bullying, micromanagement and a lack of work/life balance and compromise psychological safety.  Moreover, when there is an incident and lack of empathy is shown to the injured employee, then psychological safety is further compromised. 

It is important to remain proactive in the workplace to encourage psychological safety.  Proactive strategies include regular check ins without micromanaging to review the employee's performance but also their mental status, to intervene if there is a risk to their psychological safety and also improving your recruitment process to ensure there is an optimum person-job fit.  

While sending the employee to EAP services for counselling or coaching can help it is also important to consider a systems approach.  A systems approach will be the culture of the organisation, how each member of the team identify with each other and if there is unity and how the employee identifies with their workplace vision, goals and values as well as the work itself.