HumanDebt™ Has High Interest Rates - The Cost of the Lack of Psychological Safety

Many people believe that one of the reasons why Psychological Safety isn’t being made a priority in the business world above the generalised lip-service level, is that employee wellbeing still feels like an afterthought and a nice-to-have and not a must-have.

Granted, if we compare it to industries where it is a life or death matter such as aviation or healthcare, when it comes to business, a lack of psychological safety isn’t about direct danger to life. The Boeing story - now popularised by the popular Netflix documentary- and these types of stories where not speaking up was the evident root cause of the climate that cost the lives of innocent children such as this horrendous story of the greatest maternity scandal in the history of the NHS are obviously very different and on another scale so it would be natural to assume “it’s not as important” in business as it is in these same industries.

Often times, this lesser importance is one of the strongest excuses for not spending any time thinking of the team dynamic and trying to make people’s lives better. Because there are “other priorities” and “it’s not crucial for us, certainly not life and death so it would be nice but it has to wait”.

I put it to us that there is more hidden cost than anyone is willing to admit.

We spoke about this incessantly before but our employees are by en large tired, spent, burned out, depressed, anxious, dreading and even all kinds of “DIS” - disillusioned, dispassionate, disengaged. Is that sustainable? Of course not. Is it taking a human toll? Most definitely.