Has working from home got you feeling alienated from your team? Here’s how to incorporate psychological safety to engage your employees.

The hazy boundary between work and personal life has been blurred even more profoundly since the COVID-19 crisis. As the pandemic lingers on and new variants continue to emerge, the hybrid workforce that COVID-19 has helped to shape isn’t dissipating anytime soon. And whether managers like it or not, the changing atmosphere of the hybrid workplace impacts corporate culture. Psychological safety is one of these shifting elements. Topics that were taboo before COVID-19 such as child care, personal life challenges, and now COVID-19 health concerns have risen to the forefront. This is why understanding and incorporating psychological safety is more crucial than ever. As Dr. Amy Edmondson describes it, psychological safety is “the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation”.?

Of course, privacy and legal concerns are still relevant. Prying is certainly not the method in which to solve the ever-evolving challenges that arise due to working from home. Instead, cultivating psychological safety is. Psychological safety can be fostered by creating an environment where employees feel comfortable to bring up personal issues and other matters that intersect with their availability at work. This also includes managers trusting their employees to make the best decisions for themselves and their families in coordination with the needs of their teams.?

Like many things in life, “show don’t tell” applies to crafting a psychologically safe environment as well. So if you are a manager or in a leadership position, here are five approaches you can take.?

1. Collaborate. People only support change they help to create. And, your employees are your teammates, so involve them! Encourage them to come up with solutions to the challenges that arise in a hybrid workplace. Help them realize participating actively in stewarding and shaping the culture is beneficial for them too.?
2. Be real. We encourage you to share your own struggles with work-life balance with your teams. Be willing to be honest and humble if you want your employees to be vulnerable in return.?
3. Start small. Ease in sensitive conversations slowly. Even in a psychologically healthy work environment, people take time to open up. To encourage a gradually more candid corporate culture, take the initiative by being the first to share small disclosures.?
4. Be patient. Building trust is a process, and significant changes like switching from office-only to a hybrid mode of work takes time to get accustomed to. To streamline this process, it’s important to highlight how increased transparency is a win-win situation for everyone.
5. Pay attention to language. It may feel off and lonely to be supervising a remote office. Leaders and managers are already psychologically isolated because of the authority they hold. However at sea you may feel, it’s important to know that as the leader, your words can have meanings and outcomes you don’t intend. Notice seemingly innocuous comments such as “we miss having you around” as they can be interpreted as subtle jabs and reverse the sense of psychological safety you’ve worked so hard to create.?

What are your strategies for dealing with the psychological isolation spurred on by remote work? We’d love to hear from you and the many ways you’ve tackled the unique challenges working from home has brought on. Ultimately, the best way forward in cultivating psychological safety is to reflect on what elements of existing corporate culture make employees comfortable and what areas need attention and growth.

See this Harvard Business Review article by Amy C. Edmondson and Mark Mortensen for more information. This post covers and is inspired by their article.