For organizations looking to strengthen their culture and level up their performance, the starting point should always be understanding how their workplace is functioning today. Where is communication breaking down? What’s getting in the way of collaboration? What’s impeding innovation and growth? How could talent retention be improved?
These are big questions; leaders need a way to navigate the diagnosis, understand root causes, and prioritize action. On this journey, there’s no better north star than psychological safety. But psychological safety isn’t just a guiding concept – it’s something you can measure, track, and manage for. In this article, we’ll show you how. First, though, let’s get clear on terms.
Psychological safety: A quick definition
At the Psychological Safety Institute, we see psychologically safe workplaces as those where people feel safe (“I’m not under threat”), comfortable (“I can show up as myself”), and confident (“I can contribute and add value”).
We treat psychological safety not as a “speak up” remedy, but as an org-wide system for performance; something you design and embed to improve how work actually gets done. You can read more about how we define psychological safety, and make it actionable, here.
Below, let’s explore what a methodical approach to measuring psychological safety looks like.
Asking the right questions
A quick search online will surface plenty of sources sharing psychological survey questions. Most are too narrow in focus. They don’t capture how psychological safety develops and spreads throughout an organization. And they ignore critical capabilities that psychological safety makes possible. To build a more rounded picture of your workplace dynamics, and turn that into insight you can act on, you need a more rigorous, more practically-minded approach.
At PSI, we’ve developed Lux – a purpose-built benchmarking tool and index for multinationals, validated by the University of Cambridge. Lux uncovers what’s really happening across five critical areas:
- Individual performance capacity
- Communication effectiveness
- Team operating maturity
- Learning and adaptability
- Innovation execution readiness
These five core capabilities directly shape how people perform, collaborate, adapt and innovate at work.
Individual performance capacity is the extent to which people can sustain ownership, resilience and effective decision-making under pressure. At this foundational level, we ask questions around self-awareness, personal responsibility, and communicating boundaries.
Communication effectiveness centers on how clearly people exchange information, navigate difficult conversations and maintain productive working relationships. The key themes are expression, understanding, and dialogue.
Team operating maturity looks at whether teams have the clarity, participation and decision structures required for consistent execution. This is about how people align and work together. Questions probe whether employees know what’s expected of them, how decisions get made, and more.
Learning and adaptability unpicks the organization’s ability to reflect, evolve and respond to change through feedback and continuous improvement. Questions uncover how common it is for people to teach teammates new skills, and whether teams are setting time aside to reflect on how they collaborate, for instance.
Lastly, Innovation execution readiness examines how teams generate and develop ideas, and translate them into practical solutions that move the business forward. Questions explore whether people have protected problem-solving time, whether diverse perspectives are being drawn on, and whether people feel confident executing their ideas.
We measure 27 key psychological safety indicators and run in-depth analysis to reveal the organizational capabilities influencing performance – benchmarked against industry peers.
Asking the questions right
Asking the right questions is only half the battle. Asking them the right way is key – to accurately measure psychological safety, we need to make sure people feel safe enough to answer candidly.
When employees are sent an internally-created engagement survey, they’ll often assume it’s a monitoring exercise, not a learning exercise. They may worry about the consequences of telling the truth, inferring that their answers will be used to judge them rather than support them. Bringing in a third party helps to defuse this sense of surveillance and threat.
We’ve engineered our Lux Psychological Safety Index for true anonymity:
- All names and emails are automatically stripped out
- All data is aggregated
- Survey only goes to teams of 10+ to ensure respondents can’t be identified
We help leaders communicate the survey’s purpose in a way that builds trust and buy-in. Survey wording and answer mechanics play an important role too. The way questions are framed can either invite honest reflection or push people back into giving the right answer mode, so we use neutral, non‑judgemental language. And we’ve worked with specialist statisticians to design response scales that generate data that can drive decisions.
Analyzing the findings
Any measurement exercise is only as valuable as the lessons you’re able to take away. When large organizations run their own internal culture research, making sense of the findings and translating them into an impactful action plan is usually the biggest challenge.
That’s why our Culture Reset builds on Lux analysis with on-site exploration of any patterns of dysfunction or toxicity, a clear narrative about what’s driving performance and risk in your culture, and concrete, actionable recommendations. That might mean spotting where strong innovation readiness is being held back by weak communication in a particular function, for example. We might discover that people feel confident making decisions, but less confident setting boundaries with others. We might find that some teams are performing exceptionally across all five areas of capability, while others are struggling. Every business is different.
Of course, measurement and analysis shouldn’t only happen once. Annual tracking and reporting creates accountability and ensures that the investments you make in culture are moving the needle.
Measure yourself against the best
Knowing how your organization scores across the five areas we’ve discussed is powerful. Knowing how those scores compare to global standards is transformative.
Benchmarking with Lux gives leaders something that internal data alone cannot: perspective. The same principle is well-established in financial performance, where organizations routinely measure themselves against sector benchmarks to understand competitive position. And it’s embedded in physical safety culture in high-risk industries like manufacturing, where benchmarking against international standards helps organizations identify critical gaps before they become incidents.
Culture deserves the same rigor. Our benchmarks are drawn from our own global research, giving leaders an honest steer on where they stand relative to high-performing organizations worldwide, along with the minimum levels they should be aiming for.
For those reaching the highest standards, PSI will be recognizing their achievement through accreditation as a Psychologically Safe Workplace.
Make culture your competitive edge
The organizations leading their industries in the years ahead will be those where people feel safe, comfortable and confident enough to do amazing things together. Places where high-quality thinking, communication, and contribution happen as standard. In multinationals, that kind of culture doesn’t emerge by accident – it’s measured methodically, designed intentionally, and improved continuously.
Learn more about the Lux Psychological Safety Index
The hardest things to see in a business are often the most critical – Lux brings them into focus. Validated by the University of Cambridge, Lux gives you benchmarked data and insight to drive change. Get the Lux lowdown here.