This content is restricted to site members. If you are an existing user, please log in. New users may register below.
HRM speaks with Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson who offers practical tips for cultivating psychological safety in the workplace. Picture this: an employee has an innovative idea that could solve a complex problem that you’ve been scratching your head about for months, but they choose to stay quiet. Now picture this: an employee is working in the production line at an aircraft company and notices that issues with equipment delays are resulting in an increase in defects. This means the aircrafts are likely unfit for use. In this instance, the employee does voice their concerns, but they’re brushed aside. These two examples show how varied the impacts of a lack of psychological safety at work can be. In the first instance, the company is missing out on a good idea and wasting valuable resources. In the second scenario, people died. How do we know this? Because the latter example is real. Following the devastating Boeing crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019, killing a total of 346 people, former Boeing US senior manager Ed Pierson came forward as a whistleblower, claiming a swathe of issues from equipment delays and backlogs of work, to a culture of stress
