Mental health in the workplace is increasingly recognised as a multidimensional construct that extends beyond the clinical absence of illness. It encompasses an individual’s intrinsic capacity to regulate cognitive and emotional stressors while maintaining productive interpersonal relations. Within organisational contexts, this capacity is deeply influenced by the social environment in which individuals operate.
A central condition that enables individuals to raise concerns about wellbeing and mental health is the presence of psychological safety—a concept widely developed by Amy C. Edmondson. Psychological safety describes a shared belief among team members that the workplace is safe for interpersonal risk-taking: individuals feel able to ask questions, acknowledge uncertainty, raise concerns, and express divergent viewpoints without fear of humiliation or punishment.
The presence or absence of psychological safety is therefore not simply a matter of interpersonal dynamics; it directly shapes how individuals experience stress, learning, contribution, and innovation within organisations.
Psychological Safety as a Foundation for Mental Health
When employees feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to speak openly about challenges—including those related to workload, stress, and mental wellbeing. In this sense, psychological safety functions as the social infrastructure of workplace mental health.
To feel comfortable raising mental health concerns, employees must perceive both respect and permission within the organisational environment. Respect refers to the extent to which individuals feel valued as members of the group, while permission reflects the degree to which they are allowed to participate, influence decisions, and express their perspectives.
These two dimensions form the basis of the model proposed by Timothy R. Clark, who conceptualises psychological safety as a developmental process consisting of four progressive stages.
The Four Stages of Psychological Safety
As respect and permission increase within a team, individuals move through four levels of psychological safety that progressively support both wellbeing and performance.
a) Inclusion Safety: represents the foundational stage. At this level, individuals feel accepted as members of the group and experience a sense of belonging. When inclusion safety is present, employees can present their authentic identities without fear of exclusion or marginalisation.
b) Learner Safety: emerges when individuals feel secure enough to engage in learning behaviours. Employees are able to ask questions, explore ideas, experiment with new approaches, and openly acknowledge mistakes. In practice, learner safety is visible when people ask questions out of genuine curiosity, try unfamiliar methods, learn from unsuccessful attempts, and seek help without hesitation. These behaviours are essential for both individual development and organisational adaptability.
c) Contributor Safety: develops when individuals feel trusted to apply their knowledge and abilities to organisational goals. At this stage, employees are confident that their skills and perspectives are valued. They become more willing to speak up, clarify expectations through active listening, and volunteer to assume responsibilities or lead initiatives.
d) Challenger Safety: The highest level is challenger safety, where individuals feel sufficiently secure to question existing practices and propose improvements. Challenger safety allows employees to explore new ideas even when solutions are not fully formed, to disagree respectfully with authority figures, and to establish boundaries when necessary. This stage is particularly critical for innovation, as it enables organisations to identify inefficiencies and adapt to changing environments.
Stigma and the Silence Around Mental Health
Despite growing awareness, stigma remains one of the most significant barriers to addressing mental health in organisational settings. As noted by Jerome Adams, stigma surrounding mental health can be more damaging than the conditions themselves because it prevents individuals from seeking support.
When mental health concerns are normalised in the same way as physical health issues, employees become more willing to seek assistance and organisations can intervene earlier. The reduction of stigma therefore depends heavily on the degree of psychological safety present within the workplace.
What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, more unashamed
conversation.-Glenn Close (actress and producer)
When Psychological Safety Is Absent
When respect and permission are not balanced, organisational cultures often drift toward dysfunctional patterns.
In paternalistic cultures, respect is relatively high but permission is limited. Organisations may express concern for employee wellbeing, yet decision-making remains centralised and employees are not trusted to exercise judgment. This dynamic produces environments characterised by micromanagement and limited autonomy, where individuals feel protected but not empowered.
In exploitative cultures, the opposite imbalance occurs: employees may appear to have high levels of freedom or responsibility, yet they receive little genuine respect or support. Individuals are expected to perform continuously without regard for human limits, leading to chronic stress, burnout, and reduced organisational sustainability.
Both dynamics undermine psychological safety and ultimately weaken the organisation’s capacity to support mental health.
Building Psychologically Safe Organisations
Organisations can strengthen psychological safety by:
• Modelling vulnerability
Leaders can demonstrate healthy boundary-setting and openly acknowledge uncertainty, cognitive fatigue, or the limits of their own knowledge. When leaders communicate in this way, they signal that expressing difficulty or asking for support is legitimate rather than stigmatised.
• Conducting sustainability audits
Organisations should periodically review strategic objectives, workloads, and operational practices to ensure that performance expectations do not rely on unsustainable working patterns. Excessive working hours and chronic workload pressures have been identified by the World Health Organisation as significant risk factors for mental health conditions.
• Encouraging open dialogue
Leaders and teams can actively normalise conversations around wellbeing by creating structured opportunities for discussion. This may include reflective team meetings, feedback sessions, or regular check-ins that allow employees to raise concerns before challenges escalate.
• Providing supportive intervention
Changes in engagement, collaboration, or productivity may signal underlying psychological strain. Rather than interpreting these signals solely as performance issues, leaders should approach them as opportunities for supportive dialogue and access to appropriate resources.
Conclusion
The normalisation of mental health discourse is a prerequisite for organisational longevity. By institutionalising the four stages of psychological safety, organisations can mitigate the risks of burnout and attrition while fostering an environment of trust, innovation, and systemic resilience.
References
Adams, J. (2022). Normalize mental health to fight stigma and save lives. U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/index.html
Clark, T. R. (2020). The 4 stages of psychological safety: Defining the path to inclusion and innovation. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Ghebreyesus, T. A. (2022, June 17). World mental health report: Transforming mental health for all. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240049338
Tutu, D. (2008, May 19). Address to the 61st World Health Assembly. World Health Organisation. https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/A61/A61_DIV6-en.pdf
World Health Organisation. (2022, September 28). Mental health at work. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mental-health-at-work
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