ICAS ICAS logo

Quicklinks

  1. About Us

    Find out about who we are and what we do here at ICAS.

  2. Find a CA

    Search our directory of individual CAs and Member organisations by name, location and professional criteria.

  3. CA Magazine

    View the latest issues of the dedicated magazine for ICAS Chartered Accountants.

  4. Contact Us

    Get in touch with ICAS by phone, email or post, with dedicated contacts for Members, Students and firms.

Login
  • Annual renewal
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Find a CA
  1. About us
    1. Governance
  2. Members
    1. Become a member
    2. Newly qualified
    3. Manage my membership
    4. Benefits of membership
    5. Careers support
    6. Mentoring
    7. CA Wellbeing
    8. More for Members
    9. Area networks
    10. International communities
    11. Get involved
    12. Top Young CAs
    13. Career breaks
    14. ICAS podcast
    15. Newly admitted members 2022
    16. Newly admitted members 2023
  3. CA Students
    1. Student information
    2. Student resources
    3. Learning requirements
    4. Learning updates
    5. Learning blog
    6. Totum Pro | Student discount card
    7. CA Student wellbeing
  4. Become a CA
    1. How to become a CA
    2. Routes to becoming a CA
    3. CA Stories
    4. Find a training agreement
    5. Why become a CA
    6. Qualification information
    7. University exemptions
  5. Employers
    1. Become an Authorised Training Office
    2. Resources for Authorised Training Offices
    3. Professional entry
    4. Apprenticeships
  6. Find a CA
  7. ICAS events
    1. CA Summit
  8. CA magazine
  9. Insight
    1. Finance + Trust
    2. Finance + Technology
    3. Finance + EDI
    4. Finance + Mental Fitness
    5. Finance + Leadership
    6. Finance + Sustainability
  10. Professional resources
    1. Anti-money laundering
    2. Audit and assurance
    3. Brexit
    4. Charities
    5. Coronavirus
    6. Corporate and financial reporting
    7. Business and governance
    8. Ethics
    9. Insolvency
    10. ICAS Research
    11. Pensions
    12. Practice
    13. Public sector
    14. Sustainability
    15. Tax
  11. CPD - professional development
    1. CPD courses and qualifications
    2. CPD news and updates
    3. CPD support and advice
  12. Regulation
    1. Complaints and sanctions
    2. Regulatory authorisations
    3. Guidance and help sheets
    4. Regulatory monitoring
  13. CA jobs
    1. CA jobs partner: Rutherford Cross
    2. Resources for your job search
    3. Advertise with CA jobs
    4. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
    5. Azets | What's your ambition?
  14. Work at ICAS
    1. Business centres
    2. Meet our team
    3. Benefits
    4. Vacancies
    5. Imagine your career at ICAS
  15. Contact us
    1. Technical and regulation queries
    2. ICAS logo request

Experts explore how leaders can foster a sense of personal belonging in an increasingly digital workforce

  • LinkedIn (opens new window)
  • Twitter (opens new window)
By CA magazine

28 April 2022

Psychological safety is a critical driver of retention and performance. Karam Filfilan meets the experts to learn how leaders can foster a sense of personal belonging in an increasingly digital workplace

Read May's CA magazine now

When employees feel valued, able to share ideas and challenge established thinking without fear of negative consequences, they become more innovative, resilient and open to the benefits of diversity. It may sound obvious, but surprisingly few business leaders are able to create such an environment, despite the clear benefits.

A recent survey by McKinsey, which looked at the role of leadership behaviour in creating psychologically safe spaces for employees, asked more than 1,500 participants how often their leaders demonstrated supportive behaviour and how challenging their work was. It found that just 26% of team leaders were seen to create work with meaning while also supporting their employees through it. Conversely, 41% of team leaders created a poor environment where workers felt afraid to ask for help and were too demotivated to challenge the status quo. The result? A disengaged workforce who are apathetic about their work.

So, what is psychological safety and how do we create it? “The best way to describe psychological safety is as permission for candour. It’s about the cost of people holding back relevant observations, concerns, mistakes and ideas because of worrying about what colleagues will think about them,” says Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, and one of the first to research the topic back in 1999.

Edmondson believes that the pandemic and remote working have changed the scope of psychological safety. What was once the domain of the workplace has expanded as the line between personal and professional life blurs. At the same time, remote working provides new challenges to building psychologically safe workplaces.

“Remote work means that you see into your colleagues’ lives in a way you didn’t before. Childcare means they might not be able to attend a particular meeting at a particular time in a way you wouldn’t have noticed before. The most important thing to realise is that remote work lowers the level of psychological safety on average or, put another way, it raises the bar on voice. It makes it harder for people to lean in with a spontaneous comment at an appropriate time. You have to unmute yourself or raise your hand and that creates a higher hurdle,” says Edmondson.

This isn’t simply about wellbeing at work – it’s about the future success of your business. Businesses that fail to acknowledge psychological safety will pay the ultimate price, with employees eventually leaving. For Edmondson, the Great Resignation means businesses need to be “more enthusiastic” about selling themselves and the work they do. Brand reputation, purpose and how you treat employees are increasingly important. Organisational culture is a huge part of this and creating psychological safety is now a recruiting and retaining aspect.

Tracey Rob Perera CA, Chair of ICAS’ EDI Committee and former KPMG Business Strategy Transformation Director, agrees with Edmondson that psychological safety is key to creating a positive culture – but stresses that remote working isn’t a barrier if businesses create the right communication channels.

“Multi-directional communication, whether face to face or through digital channels such as Slack, is vitally important,” she says. For Perera, psychological safety is a key driver of many of the requirements needed for success in the future of work. Improved equity, diversity and inclusion, more creative and innovative thinking, and employees being able to work to their full potential all require psychological safety.

Trust and teamwork

Perera believes psychological safety is critical when driving complex change and managing through a crisis. She cites her time at KPMG, where she led the no-deal Brexit contingency planning involving more than 100 employees. The first challenge was getting senior leaders to agree on the worst-case scenario, with all employees having to work remotely simultaneously, navigating potential travel and border issues. Perera says the executive committee believed this presented no issues. But she worked with junior employees to uncover the knowledge on the ground. “I gave them a safe space to talk about what could go wrong and let them make their voices heard,” she says. “I told them they wouldn’t face retribution and that we would solve the issue together. Only by creating a safe place to speak freely are people able to raise concerns and tough problems that they may not themselves know how to resolve”.

To create psychological safety, leaders need to demonstrate emotional intelligence in this way. They must be open to the different drivers motivating individuals and be aware of the impact of their own behaviour. Being emotionally and physically available to your team is vital, as is rewarding openness and even challenging leader and group behaviour.

“I’d invite all 100 employees to attend group progress meetings. And if team leaders were either misrepresenting or not catching problems, employees had the chance to come directly to me. It’s about making yourself available as a leader and showing that we were inclusive and not hierarchical,” says Perera.

“I was running leadership committees reporting directly to the executive committee and board members. Unlike normal practice, I would bring in a junior employee who was working on a particular part of a project. The junior member was able both to receive credit where it was due and, in turn, to understand the big picture of how their work fitted into the business. It showed we were all working together to come up with solutions and it left the employee even more motivated to over-perform.”

Culture shift

When building a psychologically safe organisation, it’s important to ensure that it’s a cultural initiative, rather than something siloed with the HR department or an individual. As a project, it centres on strengthening trust – and that requires everybody to be on board.

“If you look at the models that exist around wellbeing and trust, they often look at it through a single lens – diversity, health and safety, reward,” says Kate Field, Global Head of Health, Safety and Wellbeing at business standards and improvement company British Standards Institution (BSI). “This is actually about your people, so unless you think holistically and join it all up, you’re going to limit your success.”

Psychological health and safety in the workplace has long been an issue. Mental ill health accounted for 19% of all sick days in the UK in 2021 – more than Covid-19 (16%). Failure to adequately address issues around psychological safety causes employees to leave, too, with 54% of people who take two or more mental health-related absences going on to leave their jobs. Replacing this talent is hugely expensive, with Gallup reporting that voluntary turnover costs US businesses $1trn (£760bn) each year.

“It’s no longer enough for leaders to say ‘people are our number one priority’. How do you demonstrate that authentically, rather than it just being a tick-box exercise? People leave not just because they’re unhappy, but because they’re unappreciated. They don’t feel a culture of trust,” says Field.

The good news is that many organisations are treating psychological safety as a strategic priority. Wellbeing initiatives, alongside the increased focus on emotional health brought about by the pandemic, means psychological safety has risen up the business agenda. To build on this progress, Field advises leaders to look to standards and best practice, such as those introduced by the BSI and the International Organisation for Standardisation. She describes such frameworks as “free consultancy” from industry experts, allowing businesses to use what is relevant to them. “Don’t be intimidated by standards. Begin by reviewing the standard and the areas that are most relevant and useful to you,” she suggests.

Ultimately, psychological safety is about futureproofing your business. Without it, you face losing your best talent, missing opportunities for innovation and falling behind more progressive competitors. The shifting expectations of employment following the pandemic mean employees will no longer put up with a poor workplace culture.

“Be brave and be honest,” says Field. “We’re all humans and we all have emotions. We all know how helpful it is when we’re in difficulty and someone reacts well and supports us. You’re trying to create that within your organisation. Creating the right environment for your people to be successful will create the right environment for your business to be successful.”

Read May's CA magazine now

CA magazine: May 2022

By Sarah Speirs, ICAS Executive Director of Member Engagement and Communication

28 April 2022

Finance + Mental Fitness

Explore our latest insights on best practice for healthy minds and happy workplaces. Mental fitness will be our focus theme…

2022-01-xero 2022-01-xero
ICAS logo

Footer links

  • Contact us
  • Terms and conditions
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Privacy notice
  • CA magazine

Connect with ICAS

  • Facebook (opens new window) Facebook Icon
  • Twitter (opens new window) Twitter Icon
  • LinkedIn (opens new window) LinkedIn Icon
  • Instagram (opens new window) Instagram Icon

ICAS is a member of the following bodies

  • Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (opens new window) Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies logo
  • Chartered Accountants Worldwide (opens new window) Chartered Accountants Worldwide logo
  • Global Accounting Alliance (opens new window) Global Accounting Alliance
  • International Federation of Accountants (opens new window) IFAC
  • Access Accountancy (opens new window) Access Acountancy

Charities

  • ICAS Foundation (opens new window) ICAS Foundation
  • SCABA (opens new window) scaba

Accreditations

  • ISO 9001 - RGB (opens new window)
© ICAS 2022

The mark and designation “CA” is a registered trade mark of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), and is available for use in the UK and EU only to members of ICAS. If you are not a member of ICAS, you should not use the “CA” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to accountancy, tax or insolvency services. The mark and designation “Chartered Accountant” is a registered trade mark of ICAS, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Chartered Accountants Ireland. If you are not a member of one of these organisations, you should not use the “Chartered Accountant” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to these services. Further restrictions on the use of these marks also apply where you are a member.

ICAS logo

Our cookie policy

ICAS.com uses cookies which are essential for our website to work. We would also like to use analytical cookies to help us improve our website and your user experience. Any data collected is anonymised. Please have a look at the further information in our cookie policy and confirm if you are happy for us to use analytical cookies: