Treating Psychological Safety as Safety Engineering

A worker has fallen off the same platform twice in a month.

The site manager gathers the team and says:
“We need to build more trust. Let’s talk about how confident you all feel using the platform.”

It’s absurd. Everyone can see the real issue: the platform itself is a hazard. Until that hazard is managed, mindset doesn’t matter.

And yet this is exactly how organisations often approach psychological safety.

We encourage openness while the environment quietly punishes it.
We talk about trust while the system produces hazards that make trust fragile.

Psychological safety has drifted into the realm of culture and aspiration — something emotional or optional. But in reality, it’s far more concrete:

Psychological safety isn’t a feeling. It’s the absence of psychological hazards.

And just like physical safety, the work begins with identifying hazards clearly and rigorously.

Hazards Come First

In safety engineering — including methods like STPA — we don’t begin by asking, “How do we help people feel safe?”
We begin with:

“What hazards exist in this system?”
“How do we manage them?”

Psychological safety works the same way. Long before someone speaks up or challenges a decision, the environment has already signalled whether doing so is safe.

These signals tend to cluster in three places — the individual experience, the relational space, and the structure of the organisation. A practical way to see them is through the 3×4 Safety Signals — twelve cues across these domains where hazards tend to sit.

1. Individual Hazards — when the ground is unsafe

When things are healthy at the individual level, the inner landscape feels steady. There’s enough mental clarity to know what matters. Autonomy and boundaries hold — choices feel real, “no” lands, and work fits within a shape you can sustain. Growth opportunities give direction and momentum. Emotional honesty is possible without having to calculate the cost.

Individual hazards appear when this steadiness begins to fray.
Clarity blurs.
Choices narrow.
Growth stalls.
Honesty becomes a risk.

It’s rarely one moment — more often, it’s the slow erosion of the capacities that keep us grounded. As those capacities shrink, the mind shifts from openness to protection. And once someone is protecting themselves, interpersonal risk — speaking up, challenging, asking for help — becomes very hard to take.

2. Relational Hazards — when working together is uneasy

Healthy relational conditions feel natural and unforced. There is room for curiosity and humour. Status and worth feel steady — people sense they’re valued, not judged. Belonging and closeness allow for effortless connection. Safe learning makes mistakes recoverable rather than costly.

In that state, being around each other feels straightforward. No one is bracing. No one is watching themselves too closely.

Relational hazards appear when that ease starts to disappear.
Playfulness tightens into caution.
Status feels fragile, so people monitor how they come across.
Connection becomes careful rather than warm.
Learning becomes performance because mistakes feel too expensive.

What changes here is the ease of working with others. As the atmosphere becomes more sensitive, people manage themselves instead of meeting one another. Collaboration shrinks — not out of conflict, but out of caution.

3. Structural Hazards — when the system is unpredictable

When structural conditions are healthy, the organisation feels coherent. Organisational clarity means systems, goals, and roles fit together. Shared purpose provides direction people can align with. Trust in leadership builds when decisions are consistent and transparent. Sustainable rhythm supports both focus and recovery.

In this state, the system supports people.

Structural hazards emerge when this coherence breaks.
Clarity falters as priorities collide.
Purpose drifts as teams pull in different directions.
Trust erodes when decisions become opaque or inconsistent.
Rhythm collapses as pace outstrips capacity and recovery disappears.

Here, the mechanism is persistent unpredictability. Structural hazards force the system into reactive behaviour, which pulls everyone with it. Even strong relationships struggle when the environment won’t hold still.

This isn’t a mindset issue. It’s a design issue.

Why Good Intentions Don’t Remove Hazards

Leaders often reach for aspiration:

“Let’s build more trust.”
“Let’s encourage honesty.”
“Let’s make it safe to speak.”

But trust can’t grow on a hazardous platform.
Honesty can’t thrive inside structural chaos.
Openness can’t flourish when the safest choice is silence.

In physical safety, we don’t fix risk by urging caution or courage. We fix it by removing hazards.

Psychological safety works the same way — or not at all.

The Work

This work isn’t easy, but it is clear. Hazards can be found, understood, and managed.

The hazards are real, and so are the effects.

So the work must also be real.

Identify a hazard.
Put a control in place.
Move to the next one.

This isn’t culture-building.
It’s safety work.