In a recent survey by Benenden Health, they report that less than one third of employees are happy to talk to their manager about mental health whereas three quarters of managers say they’re comfortable discussing the topic.
I’m intrigued by the contrast, as they suggest:
- Employers are failing to effectively engage with their employees.
- Where employers do ask their employees for feedback, this is far more optimistic than the reality for fear of repercussions.
- Employers are genuinely in the dark and may be rolling out mental wellbeing policies based on erroneous information.
We still, it seems, have a long way to go.
At Mind & Mission we believe the gap comes down to one thing.
Psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be stifled, punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. At work, it’s a shared belief that this is the case.
Where it does not exist, employees can be emotionally silenced by the fear of criticism or judgement when issues arise or mistakes are made, or simply the fear of trying to engage with unapproachable managers.
The fundamental question is: how will you establish if your employees feel safe to discuss their concerns?
It’s a conundrum.
In order to ensure psychological safety, you need to understand if there is a problem, but if there is a problem, employees may not feel safe to disclose this. How do you know the difference?
Answer: you don’t.
What we all have, is an opportunity to build trust.
When we think of trust and what it means, we quickly realise it encompasses many things. We use the word trust to interpret what people say, to describe behaviours, to indicate whether we feel others have our best interests at heart and importantly to decide if we feel comfortable sharing information.
Trust is vital to the way we do business today. The level of trust in relationships, whether internal with employees or external with clients, can be a determinant of success.
The challenge is understanding trust.
For that, we have the trust equation: Trust = (Credibility+Reliability+Intimacy) / Self-orientation
Being trustworthy essentially means you are credible, reliable and others have a feeling of safety around you. Increasing credibility, reliability and intimacy will increase trust, increasing self-orientation or your focus on you rather than others, will decrease trust.
Employees rarely give over their trust to institutions; they trust the leadership, the individuals they report to and work with.
Your employees won’t disclose mental health concerns if they don’t trust you, if they don’t feel they will be fairly and compassionately treated. By evaluating yourself against the trust equation, you can assess your ability to generate trust and ultimately psychological safety.
Credit:Benenden mental wellbeing report 2020
