Connecting Psychological Safety, Psychosocial Risk and Organisational Practice

HR, HSE and Wellbeing professionals play an important role in strengthening psychological safety because they each see different parts of the organisational system. HR may see patterns in employee experience, leadership and workforce data. HSE brings a risk and prevention perspective. Wellbeing professionals may see how organisational conditions affect people in everyday practice. 

The challenge is that these perspectives are often managed separately. Psychological safety and psychosocial risk, however, do not follow organisational boundaries. They are shaped by how people lead, collaborate, communicate, make decisions and organise work.

At functional level, the opportunity is therefore not to give one function ownership of psychological safety, but to strengthen the capability to recognise, connect and respond to what is happening across the organisation.

A Growing Organisational Challenge

The challenge is no longer simply to raise awareness of psychological safety or psychosocial risk. It is to understand how these dynamics appear in everyday organisational practice — and how different professional functions respond when they do. 

HR, HSE and Wellbeing may each hold relevant information, expertise and responsibilities. But when these remain fragmented, the organisation may struggle to see the wider pattern.

This makes cross-functional understanding an important part of organisational capability.

From Personal Recovery to a Functional Organisational Lens 

Where employees have been affected by difficult or traumatic experiences, HR, HSE and Wellbeing professionals can also draw valuable insights from psychology.

The five-phase model of post-traumatic growth developed by clinical psychologist Dr Edith Shiro describes a perspective on how people may move through trauma, recovery and growth. While the model focuses on the individual experience, it has also influenced how I think about organisational response.

I have translated these five phases into a functional organisational lens for HR, HSE and Wellbeing professionals. The purpose is not to move employees through predefined stages of recovery. It is to help professionals consider what different needs may become relevant following difficult or traumatic experiences — and what this can mean for organisational awareness, response and support.

This trauma-informed lens complements the organisation's broader responsibility for psychological safety and psychosocial risk management. It does not replace the responsibility to identify and manage psychosocial risks at source.

The Five-Phase Functional Lens 

1. Awareness – Recognition and Understanding
Recognise that difficult or traumatic experiences may affect people differently and strengthen the capability to notice when additional understanding, conversation or support may be needed.

2. Awakening – Safety and Protection
Consider the conditions that help people experience greater safety, predictability and trust, while recognising the organisation's responsibility for psychological safety and psychosocial risk.

3. Becoming – Direction and a New Narrative
Create room for appropriate flexibility, reflection and support as people regain direction and make sense of how difficult experiences may affect their work and professional identity.

4. Integration – Reconnection and Belonging
Support opportunities for reconnection, participation and belonging without assuming that everyone needs or experiences recovery in the same way.

5. Transformation – Growth and Contribution
Recognise that, for some people, difficult experiences may eventually contribute to new perspectives, priorities or forms of contribution — without making growth an organisational expectation or required outcome.

Together, these five phases provide a trauma-informed functional lens through which HR, HSE and Wellbeing professionals can reflect on organisational response and support. They do not replace psychosocial risk management, nor do they prescribe an employee's recovery journey. Instead, they add a human perspective to the broader organisational capability required to respond when difficult or traumatic experiences enter the workplace.

What comes next

Functional understanding is an important step, but organisational capability requires these insights to move beyond individual professional functions. 

The next question is how psychological safety and psychosocial risk management can be translated into coordinated organisational action — connecting leadership, responsibilities, policies, work processes and decision-making.

Continue with From Insight to Implementation: An 8-Step Organisational Strategy to explore how this functional understanding can move towards business-level implementation.