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When we sat down with Alexander Pullen, Human Resources Business Partner at HubSpot and a doctoral candidate at George Washington University, for this episode of Reimagining Company Culture, the conversation centered on a phrase that has become one of the most overused in HR. Psychological safety. Alexander's argument was that the concept is real, the research is strong, and most companies still get the operational design wrong. They want the outcome without doing the daily work that produces it.
His framing was useful because he refused to treat psychological safety as a slogan. He talked about specific manager behaviors, specific listening systems, and specific decisions that make safety either real or theoretical. That practical orientation gave the conversation an edge most HR podcasts do not have.
Why Psychological Safety Is the Operating System for Modern Teams
Amy Edmondson's research at established that psychological safety predicts team performance, innovation, and the ability to surface mistakes early. The Google Aristotle study confirmed it again. Teams with high safety outperform teams with similar talent and lower safety. The finding is no longer in dispute. The implementation is where most companies struggle.
Safety is the operating layer for everything else HR cares about. It is what makes hard conversations possible, what surfaces concerns before they become complaints, and what gives employees the room to bring full effort to ambiguous problems. Without it, the rest of the People function ends up working around the absence rather than building on the presence.
What Psychological Safety Looks Like in Daily Manager Practice
What is psychological safety at work?
Psychological safety is the felt experience that you can speak up at work without being humiliated, punished, or penalized for doing it. It includes raising disagreements, admitting mistakes, asking questions, and surfacing concerns about behavior or performance. The presence or absence of safety is mostly determined by the manager.
How does a manager create psychological safety?
The manager creates safety through repeated small behaviors. Asking for input before sharing their own view. Thanking people for raising concerns. Taking action when someone surfaces a problem so the team learns the cost of speaking up is lower than the cost of silence. Modeling vulnerability by admitting their own mistakes. Each behavior is small. The pattern is what creates the felt experience.
What Actually Works When You Build a Safety-First Culture
Principle 1: Train managers on the specific behaviors that create safety
Managers cannot improve safety by reading about it. They need management training that drills the specific behaviors. Asking open questions. Reframing critique. Following up on concerns publicly so the team sees the loop close. Companies that invest in this training see the most dramatic shifts in survey scores within a quarter.
Principle 2: Lead with empathy, especially during change
Empathy is not soft. Alexander described it as the discipline of accurately understanding what another person is experiencing before responding. During change, that discipline matters more because uncertainty pushes people toward defensive postures. Leaders who model empathy during reorganizations, layoffs, or strategy shifts protect the safety they have built. Leaders who skip the empathy step usually find safety has eroded by the next survey cycle.
Principle 3: Build channels that catch what 1:1s miss
Even safe teams have conversations the manager will not hear. A confidential anonymous reporting channel does not undermine safety. It strengthens it by giving people a backup path for issues they are not ready to raise face to face. The channel becomes a learning instrument that tells leaders where the manager-employee relationship is breaking and where to invest in coaching.
Where Employee Relations Fits Into Psychological Safety
Safety only persists when the company can hear the moments where it breaks and act on them. Employee relations is the function that turns those moments into intervention. Without ER, safety becomes a slogan that survives until the first uncomfortable test. With ER, the test produces a specific response and the team sees the safety hold up under pressure.
How ER reinforces a safety-first culture
The right ER function gives managers a coach, gives leaders pattern data, and gives employees a confidential intake. That triangle is what makes the day-to-day claims about safety match the actual experience of work. Employee engagement programs and ER work best when they are wired together rather than treated as separate functions.
How Safety Shows Up During Specific Moments at Work
During performance reviews
Reviews are one of the highest-stakes safety tests. Leaders who deliver feedback with respect for the person and clarity about the behavior strengthen safety. Leaders who use the meeting as a venue for accumulated frustration erode it. The rule of thumb is simple. No surprises. Anything raised in a review should have been raised earlier and discussed in real time.
During Pride and other identity celebrations
Alexander spoke specifically about honoring and celebrating Pride without performative behavior. Genuine celebration includes paying ERG leaders, supporting LGBTQ+ employees year-round, and refusing to use identity celebrations as marketing. When the celebration is grounded in real organizational support, employees experience it as authentic. When it is not, the gap becomes a safety issue.
Frequently Asked Questions About Psychological Safety
How is psychological safety different from comfort?
Comfort is the absence of friction. Safety is the presence of trust that allows for productive friction. Safe teams disagree often and effectively. Comfortable teams avoid the disagreements that would actually move the work.
How do you measure psychological safety?
Useful measures include specific survey items adapted from Edmondson's research, manager feedback frequency, the rate at which mistakes are surfaced versus discovered later, and qualitative themes from employee feedback systems.
Why does psychological safety drop during change?
Change introduces uncertainty about status, role, and belonging. Without explicit reassurance and clear communication, employees default to protective behaviors. Leaders who acknowledge the uncertainty openly and communicate often tend to preserve the safety they have built.
What is the role of recognition in psychological safety?
Public recognition signals what the company values and rewards. Rewards and recognition programs that explicitly celebrate people for raising concerns, admitting mistakes, or asking the question no one else wanted to ask reinforce safety in a tangible way.
How can HR support managers learning these skills?
HR can provide training, coaching, peer cohorts, scripts for hard conversations, and ER partnership when situations exceed the manager's lane. Managers who feel supported are more willing to take the small risks that build safety over time.
The Bottom Line for HR Leaders
Alexander Pullen's framing is a healthy corrective for any People team that has slipped into using psychological safety as a marketing phrase. The concept is real and the operating model is achievable. It just requires daily manager practice, real listening systems, and the employee relations function that closes the loop when safety gets tested.
HR leaders who want safety to be more than a survey item should invest in three things. Train managers on the specific behaviors that create safety. Build the listening channels that catch what 1:1s miss. Wire ER into the operating model so the team sees the loop close. That is what makes safety a reliable feature of the culture rather than an aspiration.
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