Feeling safe to speak up: Leaders improving employee wellbeing through psychological safety

Abstract

Leaders play an integral role in developing psychologically safe workplaces. To better understand the mechanisms that transmit leadership behaviors and the broader employee wellbeing outcomes as a result, more insight in high-demand, hierarchical working environments is necessary. In this article the authors explore psychological safety as a mechanism through which leadership influences wellbeing and employee experience in the context of New Zealand legal practice. Law firms are often hierarchical in nature, potentially creating power differences which can prevent employees from speaking up, and where employees are known to experience poor wellbeing. To test the hypothesized relationships, a time-lagged study design was used with surveys tested at two timepoints on 89 lawyers working in law firms. Results showed that psychological safety mediates the relationship between leadership and both positive and negative aspects of employee experience (general wellbeing, intrapersonal wellbeing, job satisfaction, self-reported performance, incivility, and burnout).