A few things are certain in the post-pandemic landscape and one of these is that COVID-19 reshaped working arrangements. Home working and hybrid workplaces do not only redefine the business context from a procedural point of view, but also require business leaders to rethink one of strongest proven predictors of team effectiveness: Psychological safety of their employees.
Two years into the pandemic, the hybrid work arrangement seems like a trend that came here to stay, not only for serving hygiene protocols thanks to providing the best of two worlds -remote and onsite working-, but also for its already proven benefits: Increased productivity of employees, improved work-life balance and even lower environmental footprint for the companies implementing it. ILO has also forecasted that the increased digitalization brought as a result of COVID-19 is now forecast to make homeworking an accelerating long-term trend even after the pandemic has ended.
While this new condition opens up new, possibly exciting opportunities for the future of work, it creates new challenges regarding employees’ welfare inside the work environment. Homeworking is a very easy trap for ruining the team cohesion and shipping leaders, absorbed into finding ways to manage the new landscape, may easily leave people in an oblivion. How can employees’ psychological safety, a concept traditionally challenging to cultivate also before pandemic, can be preserved in a hybrid arrangement?
What is Psychological Safety of employees and why is important?
In ‘The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: Defining the Path to Inclusion and Innovation’, social scientist Dr. Timothy R. Clark, founder and CEO of global leadership training organization LeaderFactor, who has extensively studied the concept, argues how psychological safety lies in the capability of leaders to create an environment where employees feel included and encouraged to contribute their best ideas, without being afraid of retaliation, punishment or embarrassment. In this context, creating psychological safety is the A and Z for a healthy working environment, where employees feel included, maintaining the overall efficiency of an organization.
Even before pandemic, the critical importance of psychological safety had already emerged, with UK figures from 2018 showing that millions are lost each year due to work-related stress, anxiety, and depression. But it was in the pandemic where people felt the fatigue of the homeworking deadlock as, in most cases, they found themselves unable to strictly divide the hours of work from the hours of rest.
Why is Psychological Safety challenged in hybrid working?
It is easily understood that, in a hybrid work environment, teams do not have the direct access to one another that in-person teams do. Inconsistent communication patterns, decreased day-to-day communication and limited opportunity for relational comfortability, all create adverse effects for a “climate of openness”, the characteristic of psychological safety as described by Dr. Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School.
In the shipping sector specifically, a sector characterized by increased workload, as well as tradition-driven leadership and hierarchy patterns, the importance of psychological safety is increasingly gaining ground as a sine-qua-non of organizational efficiency.
Last year, in an interview to SAFETY4SEA, Capt. Hans Hederström, Chalmers University of Technology, Professor of the Practice, Dept. of Mechanics and Maritime Sciences, had highlighted the importance of focusing on psychological safety to enhance industry’s performance, explaining that the maritime industry needs to quit perception that human is the creator of problems and invest in ways to empower human skills.
Furthermore, in a recent SAFETY4SEA column on empowering women in maritime industry, Mrs Jillian Carson-Jackson, M.Ed, FNI, FRIN, President, The Nautical Institute said that psychological safety, thus providing a safe and healthy work environment, should be a key priority in order to embrace diversity successfully while Mrs Johanna Kull, Loss Prevention Executive, Alandia highlighted that psychological safety can bring major changes in the industry.
How can we help enhance Psychological Safety in hybrid working?
Ensure two-way communication: The biggest trap of remote working is the gradual weakening of bonding. As such, it is particularly important for managers and to dedicate a specific part of the meeting time to receiving feedback from employees, while making sure that every person on the team has the chance to speak up and contribute equally. It is also useful to encourage people to participate in active listening so that they can fully grasp others’ ideas and perspectives.
Give equal time to both remote and onsite meeting participants: Either from home or at the office, making sure that all parties in a meeting have equal chances to make their voices heard is a fundamental building block of psychological safety. Considering also the complex nature of shipping operations, it is equally important is to always have in mind and try to address misunderstandings resulting from online communication.
Pay attention to socialization: In person, employees have the opportunity of quick socializing talks in the elevator, in the hallway, in the kitchen during lunch break, etc., but this is not the case for those remaining online who can feel disconnected from these human-to-human interactions, impeding their chances to feel safe with one another. This makes more relevant than ever the need of investing in bonding events outside work hours, such as dinners and happy hours.
Normalize Psychological Safety at work: Along with Zoom and other trends that have become vital tools of everyday working life, the topic of psychological safety should also be a natural and discussable concept. Therefore, it is useful to try normalizing conversations on the topic in the workplace to enable a more inclusive environment.
The way forward
A new phase in the future of work, with hybrid working increasingly gaining ground, requires companies to rethink connection with a long-term scope. Allianz (2019) indicated that, by as early as 2025, as much as 75% of the global workforce could be millennials, bringing a completely new set of demands and expectations on the modern workplace. Along with an increasing shift to automation and the unprecedented effects of COVID-19 pandemic in shipping industry, this reflects the need for a reform in the current approach in organizational leadership to transformational leadership which will motivate people by focusing on emotional attachment, empathy, and empowerment.
