What Low Psychological Safety Scores Really Mean for Your Organization

At Curated Leadership, we often say that workplace culture is built in the little day-to-day moments: how you respond under pressure, how you treat people when priorities collide, and how you protect psychological safety when it would be easier to avoid discomfort.

When an organization sees low psychological safety scores, it’s data that indicates that people don’t feel safe to take interpersonal risks at work and more than just a vague “culture problem”.

McKinsey describes psychological safety as the absence of interpersonal fear. 

It’s when team members and employees feel safe to speak up, challenge, ask questions, and learn without social punishment.

What low psychological safety scores usually mean

Low scores rarely reflect one bad day. They usually signal a consistent pattern across teams, meetings, and decisions.

1) People are self-editing

When people are scanning for “what’s safe to say,” they spend energy on protection instead of contribution. This means that employees are holding back parts of themselves (ideas, concerns, identity, feedback) because it feels risky. 

2) Creativity and learning are being taxed

When people feel safe, they challenge assumptions, share early warnings, and test new ideas. McKinsey links psychological safety to faster innovation, better adaptation to change, and unlocking the benefits of diverse perspectives.

If your scores are low, it’s common to see fewer “real” ideas, slower feedback loops, and more agreement in public than people actually feel in private.

3) Burnout risk increases

When people don’t feel safe, they over-prepare, second-guess, and share concerns privately. That quiet effort is exhausting. McKinsey’s burnout research is clear: burnout isn’t solved by individual coping strategies because it requires addressing workplace drivers and conditions.

4) Organizational risk goes up

Low psychological safety increases the chance that people won’t flag problems early.  They will wait until problems become bigger, costlier, and harder to repair before they speak up. 

What low psychological safety looks like in real time

Low scores tend to show up in everyday signals leaders sometimes misread.  This look like the following behaviours:

• Silence in meetings, especially after a senior leader shares their view first

• Side conversations after meetings where the “real” concerns finally emerge

• Less candour, fewer early warnings, fewer dissenting opinions

• People avoiding experimentation because mistakes feel unsafe

• High performers disengaging or leaving without clear explanations

In reality, the social risk of speaking up can be higher for people who are racialized, Indigenous, disabled, 2SLGBTQIA+, newcomers, or otherwise marginalized populations, especially in environments where bias is minimized, harm is debated, or “tone” gets policed more than impact.

What to do next: practical fixes leaders can implement

At Curated Leadership, we focus on practices that create repeated, reliable signals of safety.  These are small enough to implement quickly, but meaningful enough to change daily experience. Three core practices we often use are:

• Open-door policy: a clear, safe, and predictable way for employees to raise concerns or ideas without punishment and with follow-through.

• Inclusion moments: short, structured pauses in meetings and decisions that help teams notice who is being included, who is missing, and what assumptions are driving choices.

• Regular check-ins: consistent 1:1 and team temperature checks that surface concerns early, reduce guesswork, and prevent “silent burnout.”

Here’s what that can look like in practice:

1) Make the open door real

An open-door policy only works if people believe it’s safe to use, and that something will happen after they use it. Do this:

• Clarify how concerns can be raised (email, anonymous form, 1:1, HR, leadership)

• Be explicit about confidentiality boundaries

• Set follow-up timelines (even “I’ll respond within 48 hours” changes trust)

2) Build regular check-ins into your operating rhythm

If the only time you ask “How are we doing?” is during an annual survey, you’ll always be late. Do this:

• Normalize short, consistent check-ins (1:1s, team temperature checks)

• Use two questions that invite honesty without forcing disclosure:

  • “What’s feeling harder than it should right now?”

  • “What do you need from me to do your best work?”

3) Use inclusion moments to interrupt patterns early

Inclusion moments are small, intentional pauses that help teams widen participation and reduce bias before a decision becomes a problem. Do this:

• Build a 60–90 second inclusion moment into key meetings (hiring, performance, promotion, strategy):

  • Who hasn’t spoken yet?

  • What perspectives are missing?

  • What’s the risk if we proceed without them?

• Host an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with your team.

  • Open the floor to any questions from team members. 

  • Help teams get to know their leaders and connect with them more personally.

  • This session can be related to specific areas of work or specific probes, and typically last between 30-60 minutes in length.

• If you have a team member who speaks negatively about peers, talk to them about it.

  • Be clear; let them know that you work together as a team and negativity will not be tolerated.

  • When leaders allow negativity to go unaddressed, it can become contagious and spread to other areas of the team.

4) Change meeting norms

Two shifts that consistently raise psychological safety:

• Ask for input before leaders share their view

• Reward dissent with curiosity: “Tell me more. What are we missing?”

5) Close the loop

People stop speaking up when nothing changes. Do this:

• Communicate what you heard, what you’re doing, who owns it, and when you’ll revisit it

• Even “we can’t change that right now, and here’s why” builds more trust than silence

Let us support you

If you’re sitting with low psychological safety scores right now, you don’t need another generic initiative. You need a practical plan: leadership behaviours, meeting norms, accountability, and a way to translate survey results into daily practice.

This is exactly what we do through ourWorkplace Culture Solutions and leadership training workshops.

If you want to strengthen psychological safety before the next performance cycle (or before burnout costs you more talent), book a callor book a workshop while planning windows are still open.