It’s important to have a culture of safety in your organization.
A culture of safety is one where people feel psychologically safe, where they feel free to speak up, share ideas, admit mistakes, ask for help, bring up problems, disagree, and share feedback because they know their leaders and coworkers are there to support and help them, not judge or “get” them.
A culture of safety has so many benefits. In a culture of safety:
- Employees are motivated and engaged
- Productivity is higher
- Turnover is lower
- Ideas are shared
- Innovation happens
- Employees feel heard and valued
- Problems are revealed early
- Better decisions are made
- Information is freely passed around
- More revenue is earned
- The organization is able to accomplish its mission faster and better.
So, then the question is, how do you build a culture of safety? Here are 30 actions you can take to make that happen.
1. Encourage mistakes
Encourage mistakes (the right kind, of course – see the article about employees making mistakes).
Be about learning and solving problems, not punishing. Reward people for trying new things, innovating, and taking risks, even if they fail. When discussing mistakes, ask what they learned from it, and depending on the mistake, what steps they can take to fix it.
As Ray Daleo said, “Create a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them.”
“Create a culture in which it is okay to make mistakes and unacceptable not to learn from them.” – Ray Daleo Share on XListen to Podcast: Episode 10: Make It Safe
2. Ask for feedback
One of the best ways to start encouraging people to speak up, disagree, and share information is to ask for feedback yourself.
Ask for it, encourage, draw it out, and receive it well.
Don’t get defensive or upset. Even if you disagree, tell them “thank you” and praise them for sharing that feedback.
3. Listen to ideas and implement what you can
In a similar vein, ask for and listen to the ideas of your team and employees.
Welcome them. Praise them for sharing. Implement the ideas you can and that make sense and explain when you can’t (as much as you can).
Create a system for listening and feedback.
Especially if people don’t feel comfortable speaking up, an anonymous system for sharing can be helpful. And when people share, make sure to respond and act on the feedback.
That will let people know you are serious and encourage others to share.
4. Set clear expectations
Make sure to set clear expectations about the behaviors you expect and the ones that aren’t tolerated.
If you expect people to share ideas and disagreements in meetings, say so. If you expect people to encourage each other and support each other in mistakes and silly ideas, say so.
Then, after you set expectations:
5. Model the behaviors you want
“Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work. If you want a safe culture, if you want people to exhibit positive behaviors, you must model it yourself.
If you don’t, you will just be seen as a hypocrite and no change will be made.