Psychological Safety: Breaking Down Misconceptions in High-Risk Workplaces

A recent OH&S webinar explored why psychological safety remains misunderstood in industries like construction, manufacturing, and mining—and how building trust and communication can prevent hazards.

• By Kabri Lehrman-Schmid, Cal Beyer
• Aug 20, 2025

In high-risk industries like construction, manufacturing, and mining, safety professionals and operations leadership are well-equipped to manage physical hazards—but far less prepared to address the cultural conditions that lead to communication breakdowns, disengaged teams, and missed safety opportunities.

That is the challenge OH&S set out to explore in its recent webinar: Psychological Safety—Expert Tactics to Build Trust, Improve Communication, and Prevent Workplace Hazards. Held on June 25, 2025, and sponsored by industry training leader Vector Solutions, the session brought together leaders from field operations, wellness, and executive safety roles to tackle a pressing question:

If psychological safety has proven to be a game-changer, why is it still so misunderstood?

Psychological safety, the belief that a person can take interpersonal risks without fear of punishment or humiliation, has been shown to improve performance, collaboration, and injury prevention. But many professionals remain unclear on what it looks like in practice or how it fits into daily operations.

The expert panelists were assembled by moderator Cal Beyer, Sr. Director of SAFE Workplaces for the national nonprofit SAFE Project, who aimed to demystify the concept, clarify its relevance in high-risk environments, and share real strategies for integrating it into safety systems that already exist.

A critical goal of the webinar was to clarify a working definition of psychological safety. The panelists suspected - based on their own industry experience - the term was being interpreted in multiple ways across organizations. That suspicion was confirmed by a live poll early in the session: attendees were nearly evenly split between three different descriptions, ranging from mental health conditions to stop-work authority.

Defining Psychological Safety: From Ambiguity to Action

This ambiguity highlights a common challenge: psychological safety is often perceived as abstract or “soft,” even though its outcomes - like hazard reporting, retention, and injury prevention - are anything but. To ground the term in real-world application, each panelist shared how they had come to understand psychological safety not as a one-time initiative, but as a foundational condition for communication, team cohesion, and performance.

For Hensel Phelps Project Superintendent, Kabri Lehrman-Schmid, psychological safety became essential as she led large, high-risk jobsite teams on billion-dollar aviation programs. Her leadership style evolved around the idea that culture and operations cannot be separated. “Psychological safety isn’t separate from my technical goals - it’s how I achieve them,” she said. On complex projects, she explained, workers from different trades make thousands of decisions together every day - often under pressure. Embedding trust and recognition into daily systems enables faster coordination, higher engagement, and fewer preventable issues.

Chad McDougal, Vice President, Safety, Health, and Environmental at Vulcan Materials Company, connected the concept to his decades of experience in mining safety. “We’ve always talked about empowering the workforce - but psychological safety gave us the language and structure to make it real,” he explained. By helping supervisors model vulnerability and remove blame from incident response, his team saw a measurable rise in near-miss reporting and employee engagement.

Putting Psychological Safety to Work

“Psychological safety doesn’t happen in one conversation - it’s something you build into the way work happens every day,” said Zach Harris, Wellness & Sales Consultant at HealthSource Solutions. One of the most effective ways to set the tone, he explained, is through onboarding. On a large construction project, Harris partnered with site safety leaders to incorporate mental health visibility and support into new hire orientations. “We didn’t necessarily use the term ‘psychological safety,’” he said. “But we let workers know -on day one - that this was a site where they’d be supported, that resources were available, and that people cared if they were struggling.” From showing where break tents and health stations were located to normalizing help-seeking through mental health first aid training, these early signals built trust.

Lehrman-Schmid emphasized embedding psychological safety into jobsite systems—not treating it as a separate initiative. Daily routines like huddles, logistics meetings, and walkthroughs are chances to show that collaboration is expected and contributions matter. On one project, she highlighted cross-trade support and apprentice development as cultural norms, sharing how she re-engaged a veteran carpenter by recognizing how his teaching ability made him essential to the team’s success. “When we model that kind of recognition and build coordination into our processes, we start to see people solving problems together before they escalate,” she said. His renewed pride became a motivator for the whole crew’s learning behaviors.

For McDougal, reinforcing psychological safety meant rethinking how safety leaders respond to near-miss reporting. “If a near miss goes unacknowledged, it teaches people not to report the next one,” he said. At Vulcan Materials, his team trains supervisors to respond to near-miss reports with gratitude - not discipline - and to celebrate the entire feedback chain: the person who reported it, the manager who followed up, and the resolution process. “That’s what keeps the door open for the next conversation,” he noted. The company has seen a steady increase in the quality and volume of near-miss data as a result, signaling a growing trust in both leadership and the reporting system.

Each panelist described tangible, organization-wide benefits from a deliberate focus on psychological safety. From improved cross-trade coordination to increased near-miss reporting and greater mental health visibility, their examples pointed to the same conclusion: psychological safety enhances the performance of existing safety systems. These are not abstract ideals - they’re operational outcomes. Empowered workers act sooner, share more openly, and solve problems collaboratively when they know their contributions will be respected and taken seriously.

Enhancing Adoption Across Organizations

Polling data from the webinar reinforced that many safety professionals are seeing early signs of this shift. When asked whether their organizations were intentionally building psychological safety, 42.9% of respondents said they were seeing progress, while 38.9% acknowledged the need for more direction.

When asked about the most valuable outcomes, the answers revealed the payoff: nearly 69% cited improved collaboration and teamwork, 67% pointed to increased hazard reporting and correction, and others noted gains in innovation, retention, and even productivity.

The key insight? Most organizations are still early in the journey, but the ones leaning in are already seeing results.

Strategies to Enhance Adoption

• To integrate psychological safety into daily operations, panelists recommended several practical strategies:
• Set expectations early during onboarding by emphasizing support and open communication.
• Normalize mental health conversations through visible resources and routine check-ins.
• Use daily systems - like huddles and debriefs - to reinforce inclusion and team learning.
• Respond to safety reports with appreciation, not blame, to build trust in reporting.
• Recognize collaborative behaviors, not just task completion.
• Train supervisors to model vulnerability, invite input, and lead with respect.
• Avoid “at-fault” language in incident reviews to encourage honesty and learning.
• Always follow up on feedback and show what changed to maintain engagement.

For safety professionals in high-risk industries, psychological safety isn’t about adding more - it’s about making existing systems work better. When workers trust that their input will be heard and respected, they’re more likely to report hazards, engage with training, and collaborate to solve problems early. Organizations seeing progress aren’t doing something new; they’re doing the essentials differently. Embedding psychological safety into daily operations strengthens everything from near-miss reporting to retention - it’s not a soft skill, but a strategic advantage for safer, stronger teams.