Psychological safety at work: what it is, why it matters, and how to tell if you have it

There’s a concept we at Employment Hero have found to be one of the biggest predictors of high-performing teams. It’s not talent. It’s not a process. It’s not even culture in the broad sense.

It’s whether the people on those teams feel safe enough to speak up.

Psychological safety is the belief that you can share ideas, ask questions, admit mistakes or raise concerns without being punished or humiliated for it. Yes, it sounds obvious when you see it written out like that. Of course people should feel safe at work. But the gap between what teams say they have and what employees actually experience can be significant.

This piece is for employees to identify whether you can recognise it in your own team. And if you don’t have it, what YOU can do about it.

Where the idea comes from

The term was popularised by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, who originally stumbled across it while studying medical teams in the 1990s. She expected the best-performing teams to make fewer errors. Instead, she found they reported more errors; not because they were worse, but because they felt safe enough to surface problems rather than hide them. That finding flipped a lot of assumptions about team performance.

Since then, psychological safety has been validated across industries, including a well-known internal study by Google (Project Aristotle) that identified it as the top factor in effective teams, above everything else they measured.

It’s not a soft concept. It has measurable effects on how teams learn, adapt and perform under pressure. In New Zealand workplaces, the concept of psychological safety connects closely to the broader duty of care employers hold under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015; which includes psychosocial risks, not just physical ones. WorkSafe NZ recognises psychological harm as a legitimate workplace hazard. 

What it actually looks and feels like

Psychological safety isn’t about being comfortable all the time, or having a team that agrees with everything you say. It’s specifically about whether candour is safe; whether honesty, (including uncomfortable honesty) gets a fair hearing.

You have it when:

• You can say “I don’t know” or “I got that wrong” without it being held against you
• You can push back on a decision (even your manager’s) without it becoming a problem
• You can raise a concern about a project, a process or a person without worrying about being labelled difficult
• New ideas get a real hearing, even when they challenge the status quo
• People own mistakes openly rather than covering them up or shifting blame
• Quiet people in meetings are invited in, not talked over

You probably don’t have it when:

• You rehearse what you’re going to say before speaking in meetings; not to be clear, but to make sure it can’t be used against you
• You’ve watched someone get shut down, dismissed or punished for raising something and adjusted your own behaviour accordingly
• Feedback only ever flows downward, i.e., managers critique but don’t invite critique
• Mistakes get hidden or explained away rather than examined
• The same people dominate every conversation, and everyone else has learned to let them
• You know something is going wrong but you’re not saying it, because you’ve calculated that it’s not worth the risk

That last one is worth sitting with. If you’re holding back something you genuinely think matters, such as an idea, a concern, a piece of honest feedback, that calculation is itself a signal about your team’s psychological safety.

Why it matters for you specifically

Most of the psychological safety articles focus on what leaders should do. That makes sense right? Leaders have the most power to set norms. But employees aren’t passive in this.

Where psychological safety is low, the people who suffer most are usually the ones who have the most to contribute: people with unconventional ideas, people newer to the team who haven’t yet learned what’s safe to say and people from groups that have historically been talked over or dismissed.

It also matters for your own development. Teams with high psychological safety learn faster, adapt better and give their members more genuine feedback. The kind of feedback that actually helps you grow. Low psychological safety doesn’t just make work unpleasant. It makes you worse at your job over time, because you stop taking the risks that learning requires.

What you can do, even if leadership isn’t driving it

Psychological safety is largely set by leadership, but you can impact change too.

Model the behaviour you want to see

Ask genuine questions rather than performing certainty. Acknowledge when you’re wrong. Give credit to other people’s ideas in the room. These behaviours are contagious and they’re most powerful coming from people who aren’t in formal leadership positions, because they signal that it’s safe for everyone, not just people at the top.

Name what you’re observing (carefully)  

If someone gets shut down in a meeting, a quiet acknowledgement afterwards (“I thought that was a good point, it’s worth raising again”) costs you very little and means a lot to the person on the receiving end. You don’t have to call out the dynamic publicly to start shifting it.

Use structured feedback moments

If your team does retrospectives, 1:1s or performance conversations, those are legitimate spaces to raise how the team is working, not just what the team is producing. If your workplace uses Employment Hero, the 1:1 feature gives you a structured, recorded space to raise these kinds of observations with your manager directly.

Raise it directly if you can

If you have a manager you have some trust with, naming the dynamic e.g. “I’ve noticed people seem hesitant to push back in meetings, is that something you’ve picked up on?” is often more effective than you’d expect. Managers frequently don’t see what’s invisible to them until someone says it plainly.

Understand what is in your control, and what isn’t 

Some teams don’t have psychological safety because of structural or cultural problems that go beyond what any individual employee can fix. If that’s your situation it’s worth naming clearly with leadership. Psychological safety can fluctuate during more stressful times or business emergencies. You may not be able to control everything, but you can control how you choose to react and what boundaries you set to protect your peace. 

The information in this article is current as at 21 October 2026, and has been prepared by Employment Hero Pty Ltd (ABN 11 160 047 709) and its affiliates (Employment Hero). The views expressed here are general information only, provided in good faith to assist employers and employees, and should not replace professional advice. Some information comes from third-party data believed accurate but not independently verified. No warranties ensure it is complete, accurate, current, or fit for its intended use. Employment Hero disclaims responsibility for inaccuracies and any loss or damage from reliance on this information. You should research and seek professional advice before making decisions or relying on this article.