What is one of the most critical factors in a fast-paced and ever-changing workplace? The answer is learning behaviour because it indicates how an employee can make sense of what is happening, learn and adapt, take action and advance the business in its journey. One of the best indicators of learning behaviour is psychological safety.
Schein and Bennis (1965) introduced psychological safety as a critical part of the “unfreezing” process required for organisational learning and change. When you think about the foundational components of being a learning organisation, fostering psychological safety makes sense for achieving the desired outcomes.
The elements of psychological safety from academic literature (Kahn, 1990; Edmondson, 1999; Schein, 1993) are pertinent to learning and development. A team with psychological safety:
These points create a solid foundation for being a learning organisation - one that encourages the attainment of knowledge, broadening one’s understanding, learning from mistakes and sharing lessons in a communal way to advance the people and the organisation.
According to the Australian Human Resource Institute (AHRI), there are numerous reasons why an organisation should invest in learning and development, which include:
In Amy Edmondson’s seminal work on psychological safety (1999), she concluded that, “the need for learning in work teams is likely to become increasingly critical as organisational change and complexity intensify. Fast-paced work environments require learning behaviour to make sense of what is happening as well as to take action. With the promise of more uncertainty, more change, and less job security in future organisations, teams are in a position to provide an important source of psychological safety for individuals at work. The need to ask questions, seek help, and tolerate mistakes in the face of uncertainty - while team members and other colleagues watch - is probably more prevalent in companies today than [before].” (p. 380)