safety & risk solutions Tailoring Safer Systems Das Magazin von safety & risk solutions The magazine of safety & risk solutions

Tag: Trust

  • Achieve outstanding performance with psychological safety!

    Achieve outstanding performance with psychological safety!

    Psychological safety of employees is one of the key factors for the sustainable success of companies. Employees who feel psychologically safe are willing to contribute their knowledge and ideas and enable a company to constantly learn and reinvent itself, thus gaining a decisive competitive advantage.

    The environment in which companies operate is subject to a constantly high level of dynamism. Not only in the area of (system) safety, but also in daily competition, companies are forced to reinvent themselves again and again. They must adapt to volatility, deal with uncertainty, successfully manage omnipresent complexity and make quick decisions in situations of ambiguity (VUCA) in order to successfully hold their own against their competitors.

    Employees at all levels are confronted with the same challenges when performing their tasks. In most cases, they are no longer just a cog in the system, exercising a specific, well-defined task at a predefined pace, but are confronted with dynamic situations and actively contribute to the continuous improvement of the system – be it in the area of innovation or safety/risk management. Employees are therefore no longer just resources performing a clearly defined task, but an important source of information within a company, which is the prerequisite for continuous learning and further development of the organization.

    In order to be able to make this contribution, the basis of a high level of psychological safety must be in place.

    The psychologically unsafe, toxic work environment

    In a toxic work environment, employees cannot express themselves openly for fear of negative consequences and withhold information. The work climate is characterized by mistrust. Whenever possible, they try to sweep mistakes under the carpet to avoid exposure. Knowledge is seen as power and not shared with colleagues. Managers no longer hear about what is going on in the company. The system falls silent and merely “functions”, although in retrospect there is no longer any question of functioning. There is a high risk that the company will slip unnoticed into a crisis. The lack of knowledge transfer nips the necessary further development of the company in the bud.

    The psychologically safe working environment

    A psychologically safe work environment is characterized by personal respect and appreciation. Employees feel safe and motivated to actively contribute and share information without fear of negative consequences, whether in the form of ideas or reports of problems and mistakes. There is positive collaboration and teams excel. The company has motivated and inspired employees who trust their colleagues and are actively involved in the further development of the organization. The innovation potential of the organization can be fully exploited. Conflicts within teams are used positively and seen as an enriching opportunity to learn from different perspectives and to move forward.

    A study conducted at Google identified five key factors for successful teams. These are (1) psychological safety, (2) clear roles and responsibilities within the team, (3) reliable colleagues, (4) personally meaningful work, and (5) the conviction to make an impact. Psychological safety emerged by far as the most important element, which formed the basis for the other four key factors.

    The benefits of high psychological safety

    The benefits of high psychological safety are many and can be felt at all levels within an organization. They include:

    • Fulfilment at work and, as a result, a high level of employee loyalty to the employer
    • Proven significantly better team performance
    • Constructive use of conflicts with the aim of improvement
    • Improved information flow within the company, which forms the basis for a learning organization
    • A positive and inspiring corporate culture, which enables a pronounced risk and safety culture
    • Improved resilience of the company
    • Increased innovation potential of the company

    If you look at the above list – which is still far from complete – no company can really afford not to put psychological safety high on its agenda. A toxic work environment creates immense damage in the form of daily inefficiency, high staff turnover, missed innovation, and even the demise of companies due to a crisis or loss of competitiveness. Improving psychological safety can make all the difference.

  • How good reporting makes your organisation safer

    How good reporting makes your organisation safer

    A reporting system combined with a positive reporting culture enables a company to learn from incidents and reduces the likelihood of further incidents or even accidents. But the way towards a good reporting culture is challenging and has many stumbling blocks. It is about addressing fears and creating trust. In this way, the organization can become safer and more productive in the long term with the positive effects of its reporting system and reporting culture.

    Today, numerous companies are subject to regulatory requirements to have an incident reporting system. A corresponding tool and the associated process can be introduced relatively quickly, which often means that the regulatory requirements are met. But even if a reporting system is physically available, this does not say anything about the reporting culture and thus about the quality of the reporting system.

    In this article I will look into the necessity and the advantage of a positive reporting culture and the pre-requisites for it.

    Of course, an incident reporting system is not only useful for companies that are legally obliged to do so. Every organization benefits from a good-quality reporting system and a positive reporting culture, in that it becomes visible what is happening in the organization and weaknesses can be identified and remedied. Depending on the industry, this leads to an increased level of safety and trust among stakeholders, or to higher efficiency and a decrease in production losses. With a positive reporting culture, a significant competitive advantage can be achieved. Furthermore, a reporting system is an important management tool for senior management.

    Companies are complex, socio-technical systems, the property of which is that it is not possible to know, let alone understand, all of the interactions within the organization. With reports directly from inside the system, that is, from employees at all levels, an organization receives important information from the various areas. These reports can provide information about existing processes, risks, established standards, hidden or open deviations from processes, uncertainties of employees, and so on. Such information enables the organization to identify weaknesses and thus to continuously improve and develop.

    For this it is important to get away from the attitude that humans are the weakest link in the chain and that mistakes are seen as weaknesses. Rather, it is helpful to consider that employees come to work to do a good job. If mistakes happen, it is important to understand why this action made sense to the person in this specific situation. If the employee is just punished for their mistake or – in an extreme case – excluded from the organization, the system has not learned anything from the mistake, and it is just a matter of time until some other employee makes the same mistake.

    The first step is the introduction of a reporting process, which is supported by a more or less extensive IT tool, depending on the situation. Unfortunately, many organizations fail in the following step of establishing a positive reporting culture. Reasons for failing are insufficient employee trust in the organization, fear of suffering negative consequences, or doubts about the effectiveness of incident reports.

    Employee trust

    At the beginning, voluntarily reporting errors is a difficult task for many employees. It is often our first reflex to look around to see whether someone has noticed our mistake or not. We would most like to sweep the mistake under the carpet, especially when nothing has happened, which fortunately is the case with most mistakes. This on the one hand out of shame, on the other hand out of fear of negative consequences, be it direct consequences in connection with our employment or negative reactions of our colleagues. Reporting an error means making yourself vulnerable to others – superiors and colleagues – and requires a high level of trust.

    Even if a colleague’s mistake is noticed, the hesitation to report it is often great. This may be due to a manager’s mistake, or you may not want to be perceived as someone who denounces the other person. There may also be the fear that someone else might report your own mistakes.

    In order to be able to deal with errors openly, a high degree of trust of the employees in the organization with all their employees must be present. It is important that errors are reported solely to improve the system and that the report does not contain any hidden personal agenda. Employees need to know that they will be valued and not punished for their reports.

    Anonymous reporting

    Of course, an organization may substitute trust by anonymity. However, no organization can fully guarantee this anonymity. Furthermore, anonymity significantly limits the organization’s ability to learn from a report, since a detailed analysis of the report is hardly possible. In a first step, such a substitution may make sense, but it should not stay that way. In a sustainable, positive reporting culture, anonymity hinders the organization’s ability to learn.

    Doubts about the effectiveness of a reporting process

    The step of submitting a report is not only associated with the expectation that the report will not have a negative effect on the reporter, but also that the report will be taken seriously. If there is no feedback from the reporting process, the reports will soon be viewed as meaningless and a waste of time. The number of reports will decrease.

    For the credibility of the reporting system, it is essential that the reporter receives feedback on the report. This can be a comprehensible reason why the report is not being followed up, or information about what will be done with the report. It is also important to connect changes that are introduced on the basis of a report in communication with the corresponding report – in a mature reporting culture even with the reporter themselves. This further underlines the meaningfulness of the reporting system.

    What needs to be reported?

    Reporting is often limited to reports of events that have already occurred. These are events that must be reported in accordance with the reporting process, or events where reporting is voluntary, i.e. at the discretion of the employee. These backward-looking reports are without any doubt useful and help companies to make adjustments to the system to make it more robust based on past events.

    It often happens that people in the organization say that they have seen this event coming for a long time and that it was only a matter of time for the event to happen. It could have been avoided proactively. For this reason, it is important to give employees the opportunity to express concerns and fears in the reporting system. Optimally, the employees also actively participate in problem solving through a suggestion for improvement.

    Conclusion

    The introduction of an effective reporting system is a challenge that should not be underestimated. The implementation of the process and, if necessary, an IT tool follows the demanding cultural change within the organization. In order to achieve this, numerous employee fears must be addressed, which initially stand in the way of this change. If the employees can be shown in a top-down approach that they can trust the organization and that the newly implemented reporting system will bring benefits to everyone together, the ideal conditions are created for a cultural change towards a positive reporting culture.