Trust and safety

Trust and safety. Two things you should feel at work. Hands up, who feels that way?

I can imagine that there are people who do not. Some might say, though, who cares. And truth be told, you do not need trust and safety to be successful, you can still make a great career without them. You do not need them to create a thriving business, a company can be profitable and prosperous without them. 

However, they make everything better. You can be more successful if you work in a place where you can trust your boss and co-workers. You can run a more thriving business if you create an atmosphere of trust and safety. 

For a society in whole, we need trust and safety. A world is a better place with them backing up our endeavours. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we need to feel safe in order to become better human beings and reach our potential. When we feel trust and safety, we can reach to the skies, we are nicer to people around us and we instinctively emanate good vibes. 

For us to thrive in relationships with family, friends and workmates, we first need to feel trust and safety. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory  and according to it, we get motivated by needs. In this widely accepted theory, we need to fulfill the needs from the bottom up and we cannot move to the next level before our needs on our current level are fulfilled. We can only achieve belongingness, prestige and self-actualization that are on top of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if our needs on lower levels are first fulfilled. On the first, bottom level are physiological needs (food, shelter etc) and on the next level need to feel trust and safety. 

We can see a lack of trust and safety in many workplaces. If the culture is about blame and fault-seeking, employees never feel safe. If you make a mistake and admit it, you are getting berated and blamed. At least someone is angry with you even if they do not say anything. You can see and feel it. Guess what happens next time you make a mistake? You will hide it, blame someone else or ignore it. Which all are terrible options for the workplace atmosphere and productivity.

I have seen a workplace with a culture of blame. I have seen new people coming to managers to say they made a mistake and they get a horrible treatment. Or they are blamed for a mistake they made but had not noticed. I have seen from their eyes that something is broken. Some fundamental feeling of safety you can never fix in that workplace. They stay because they have to, but they are never again as productive and happy as they first were. 

It is very hard to having seen this scene being played and being able to do nothing. When I was younger and more idealistic, I would have never even imagined myself writing that I only have watched helplessly. But time has taught me that sometimes you just cannot change things. No matter how much you want to. And the worst is when you do not even want anymore. You just want to leave as soon as you can find something else. 

However, there is always hope. There are good people, there are good managers and there are good companies. More we talk about these things and at least try to change it, the more there is hope for the better. I believe that even a small change is a beginning for a better future. We just need the courage to take that one small step and go against the culture that sows the mistrust and unsafe environment.  

Trust and safety. We can be an example of those things. Even if we work in an unsafe environment, we can be a bright beacon of hope. We can manage our people better. We can tell them mistakes happen and not lay blame. We need to calmly discuss why the mistake occurred and how to prevent it in the future. Every time your team member comes to you with a mistake, try to find something in your own practices that you could make better. Could you have prevented it? Maybe explain it better or remind the team member periodically of the best practice. They are people with their own troubles and sorrows, which sometimes cloud their thinking, allowing mistakes to happen. If we then communicate with compassion and not blame, we can create a bubble of trust and safety in any environment. And maybe, maybe we can be an example for the others who are still on the journey to understand the power of trust and safety.