Too boring to engage with, too anxiety-inducing to apply
Inspired by thoughts provoked by Zoe Scaman and the conversations had at Wade Kingsleys Creative Women’s camp in Sorrento – thank you.
Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: "psychosocial safety" sounds absolutely terrible.
Say those words at a staff meeting and watch everyone's soul leave their body. It's up there with "let’s circle back on that" or something that comes with a 37-slide HR PowerPoint and a facilitator named Brad.
"'Psychosocial Safety' also conjures the title of a workplace horror film. And it kind of is—except the monster isn't the employee screaming maniacally and stripping off all their clothes. The monster is the workload or the toxic manager that put them there."
And that's a tragedy. Because buried under those words is one of the most powerful tools we have for creating genuinely fair workplaces.
The Invisible 70+%
While organizations obsess over star performers and crisis intervention, there's an invisible majority quietly dimming. They're present but not really performing. Stuck somewhere between thriving and breaking. The 70% of workers we're losing one disengaged day at a time.
These aren't people in crisis. They're not the high-flyers either. They're just... fading. bringing less of themselves to work each day. Getting quieter. Caring less.
And here's what makes this an equity issue: that dimming doesn't happen equally.
The single mum working two jobs dims faster. The worker navigating racism dims differently than their white colleagues. The person managing chronic pain, hiding their sexuality, or living paycheck to paycheck they're all dimming at different speeds, for different reasons, with different consequences.
Why Psychosocial Safety Keeps Failing
Most psychosocial safety programs fail because we've made them either boring or terrifying. Sometimes both.
Boring. Annual surveys where you're definitely sure HR can see your responses despite their promises. Poster campaigns featuring stock photo people laughing at salads (why are they always laughing at salads?). Meditation apps nobody opens.
Terrifying. When psychosocial safety does get serious, it comes with incident reports, investigations, and someone's name going on a list somewhere. It becomes code for "someone's getting in trouble." Which”and I cannot stress this enough is the literal opposite of safety.
So people learn to keep their heads down. Especially those from marginalized groups who have the most to gain from actual psychological safety. The system meant to protect them becomes just another thing to carefully navigate while maintaining a professional facade.
What It Could Actually Be
Strip away the jargon and psychosocial safety is simple: creating workplaces where people's mental health isn't slowly destroyed by the conditions of their work.
Imagine if it actually worked. Not the poster version with the suspiciously happy stock photo but the real thing.
The junior employee could challenge the senior leader's bad idea without suddenly being "not a culture fit." People could report harassment and actually be believed instead of managed out. Workload expectations would be based on actual human capacity, not on whoever can fake "I'm fine!" the longest.
The person juggling care responsibilities could say "this is unsustainable" without being labeled uncommitted. The neurodivergent employee could get adjustments without being seen as difficult. The precarious worker could speak up without losing everything.
That's not wellness posters. That's power redistribution. That's equity work.
What Actually Needs to Happen
Kill the jargon. Nobody needs to say "psychosocial hazards" when "this job is making people sick" works fine. We don't need "psychological safety climate assessments just ask people what's wrong and actually listen. The concepts matter. The language is 100% negotiable. (Looking at you, every consultant who's ever said "ideate.")
Make it democratic. Psychosocial safety can't be owned by HR. It needs to be worker-led, with real power. If workers can't collectively refuse unsafe conditions, there's no safety just permission to complain.
Focus on prevention. Stop waiting for crisis. Start with the boring infrastructure stuff that actually works: reasonable workloads, clear boundaries, adequate staffing, genuine flexibility. These aren't sexy. Nobody's writing LinkedIn posts about them. But they're what actually prevents people from getting sick.
Connect it to reality. You can't feel psychologically safe when you're one paycheck from disaster. Psychosocial safety without addressing power, pay, and systems is meaningless.
Make it actually interesting and fun and funny. Real world workshopping. Worker-led storytelling. Real investigations into what's actually wrong. Creative interventions that change relationships and structures not just more compliance training modules narrated by someone who sounds like they're falling asleep. When it's boring, only the already-engaged participate. When it's dynamic and worker-owned, actual change happens.
The Stakes
We have this imperfect, jargon-laden tool that could genuinely redistribute power in workplaces. And we're wasting it by making it boring and scary.
Think about The Dimming Effect those 70% of workers slowly fading. They're not in crisis (yet). They're the ones who come to work and do just enough. Who stopped speaking up. Who learned that showing their whole selves isn't safe. Who've mastered the art of looking engaged in Zoom meetings while their brain is actually planning their barefoot escape to a remote off grid tiny home where nobody says "let's unpack that."
Every one of them is carrying something. Maybe anxiety about a sick parent. Financial stress. Grief they haven't processed. Chronic pain. The exhausting work of pretending to be fine when they're absolutely, definitely not fine.
These aren't character flaws. They're human experiences. But we decided at some point that being human at work was unprofessional.
Psychosocial safety done right could change that. It could catch people before they dim completely It gives women the power to call out horrendous fat-shaming language and behaviours (yes this is still happening in workplaces). Or brilliant dickheads. Before the preventable becomes inevitable.
But only if we make it less boring, less scary, and actually worker-led.
Only if we start treating it as what it is: a tool for creating workplaces where everyone not just those with the most power can show up.
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*What's your experience with psychosocial safety at work DM me? I’m collecting human stories for a book I’m writing because when we humanise PSS we make it work for everyone.
Tell your story HERE.
This article draws on concepts from Virginia Scully's work on The Dimming Effect and workplace mental health. Written with AI assistance for clarity and structure.