Emotional safety is about making space for a person’s perception regarding the outcomes of taking creative risks at work. It’s about creating an environment where employees can feel confident enough to share their true thoughts and ideas without worrying about retaliation or negative consequences. For those in HR roles, it’s important to consider how to improve worker engagement. Below are some tips to improve the emotional security of employees in the workplace.

Is Emotional Safety Really That Important?

The short answer is yes, emotional safety is essential. Harvard researchers have identified emotional safety as a crucial factor for enhancing teamwork and organization-level learning. When employees feel free to speak up regarding sensitive issues and disparities, they are able to communicate with organizational authorities openly. In other words, employees won’t be held back due to the fear of being vulnerable, which can lead to healthy organizational changes in the long run.

Tips For Improving Emotional Safety Among Employees 

• Make It Alright To Make Mistakes 

In your organization, consider how leaders and supervisors will react if an employee makes a mistake. The first step to ensuring that employees feel emotionally safe is that they must know that even if they make a mistake, they won’t be thought less of. You have to make room for employees to understand and learn from their mistakes. According to Black Box Thinking, letting employees make mistakes is crucial for innovation, which leads to success. 

• Showcase the Importance Of Employee Contributions

Another crucial component of improving employee emotions in the workplace is the sense of feeling needed. If employees’ contributions are validated, it reassures the employees that they have a bright future and also gives them the confidence to do better. Thus, training leaders and managers to visibly recognize employee contributions can result in more engaged and productive employees who are emotionally confident at work. 

• Give Voice

Employees must have a way to express concerns and frustrations. They should be able to express their views and thoughts freely to management without fear of recourse. If possible, actions should be taken so that employees know they are heard and not just speaking into a void. Companies should enable employees’ expression and voice in the workplace without causing fear of losing opportunities.

• Individualism

Even if you have only a small team of employees working at your workplace, almost all of them are different. These differences in their personalities must be identified and valued. For this reason, companies need to celebrate their employees’ individualism while accepting that different personalities and perspectives can exist within the company. According to Baumgartner Law Firm, calibration of individual circumstances is crucial in many industries. This applies not just to clients and customers, but employees too.

• Improve Trust

The key to building genuine trust is to develop supportive and authentic relationships with other employees and managers. People need to trust both the competence and character of those they work for and with. This can be communicated through policies and employer-created literature.