Psychological Safety vs. Safe Spaces
Did you know around 40% of people say they still feel like they don’t belong within their workplace?
In today’s evolving work culture the conversation around inclusion is about creating environments where people not only feel safe, but also valued, heard, and empowered. With that said, two crucial tools in building that kind of culture are: psychological safety and safe spaces.
While these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they serve different, yet interconnected, purposes. One supports team-wide openness and trust; the other offers identity-specific support and reflection. Leaders and individuals with inclusion-focused roles need both to create a workplace where every employee can bring their full self—and therefore their full potential—to work.
What Is Workplace Psychological Safety?
Most of us have experienced moments where speaking up has felt risky and unwelcome.
In spaces like this—spaces that do not consider the psychological safety of others—this fear often stifles innovation and creativity, hinders engagement, and creates a culture of silence. Many of us have encountered situations like this, whether in our work life, education, or personally and, in all likelihood, they were not your most productive times and, when they were, it was not sustainable.
The term psychological safety was coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson in 1999. She describes it as:
“A shared belief that the [work] environment is conducive to interpersonal risks like asking for help, admitting a mistake, or criticizing a project.”
To put it more clearly, a psychologically safe workplace includes:
A foundation of honesty, safety, and respect, often shaped by leaders and HR teams.
An environment where team members can speak openly about their ideas, concerns, and mistakes without fear of retaliation or embarrassment.
A space where disagreements can take place respectfully, and ideas can be shared across individuals and teams.
What is not psychological safety?
Being nice or overly accommodating
Slacking off
Behaving poorly or rudely
Rather, psychological safety focuses on creating an energizing environment that ensures honesty and transparency throughout the organization.
What Are Safe Spaces?
While psychological safety focuses on fostering a work culture where all employees feel comfortable speaking up in any setting, safe spaces tend to be more intentional creations.
A safe space is:
Designed to support specific groups of people and like-minded individuals. For example, a support group for a condition or particular problem.
Often focus on marginalized groups to express themselves without judgement.
Provide support and refuge for people to express their honest feelings about a certain topic or situation.
In other words, safe spaces aren’t focused on avoiding discomfort altogether, but instead create room for identity-affirming dialogue without fear of hostility, invalidation, or retaliation. They can be an important tool to ensure equality amongst similar people, even in a work environment, allowing employees to build solidarity, express concerns, and share experiences that center around improving their overall wellbeing.
Admittedly, psychological safety and safe spaces do sound rather similar, don’t they?
Think of psychological safety as the overall climate, and safe spaces as the shelter. The former are generally ongoing and encompass an entire team, while safe spaces are often temporary, topic-specific, and created to support individuals when their broader environment falls short of meeting their needs.
Psychological Safety and Safe Spaces: What’s the Difference?
As you can see, these terms are quite similar. However, safe spaces and psychological safety serve different, but complementary, purposes within a workplace.
Psychological safety isn’t about being overly nice or avoiding conflict. It’s about honesty, transparency, and building trust across teams. This allows for a robust sharing of ideas and the potential for innovation and creative solutions to organizational challenges.
Safe spaces are not always a part of work culture, though they can be! This can take place in the form of a variety of different ways, including employee resource groups (ERGs). ERGs are employee-led and are a place for support and career development discussions amongst a specific demographic. Furthermore, safe spaces also include facilitated experiences and listening sessions, support groups following major events, or informal peer gatherings. Overall, what matters most is that they are created with consent, intent, and care.
Other Key Differences:
🔁 Psychological Safety is part of everyday team culture and habits.
🕒 Safe Spaces are often built in response to particular needs or issues.
🎯 Psychological Safety helps everyone thrive, especially when it’s built into leadership and team dynamics.
💬 Safe Spaces provide refuge when the broader culture hasn’t yet caught up to equality and inclusion goals.
Why Psychological Safety Is a Workplace Priority
Psychological safety isn’t just a “nice-to-have”; rather, it’s foundational to creating a culture of trust, accountability, and overall inclusion. Having this kind of open dialogue also helps to prevent groupthink and uncover blind spots, especially those related to bias, power dynamics, and systemic inquiries. In other words, making room for psychological health and safety in the workplace makes room for a culture where inclusion efforts are not performative.
Imagine being in a situation where you do not feel able to speak honestly and openly at work. You will likely become silent, disengage, and may ultimately seek a more welcoming position. Conversely, in psychologically safe teams, junior employees may feel confident sharing concerns during a project planning meeting, leading to insights that prevent costly mistakes. In unsafe teams, that same feedback might go unspoken.
Regardless of how inclusive a company may say they are, what matters most is how employees feel. When workers begin to leave due to discomfort, your organization is losing valuable perspectives, talented employees, and the potential for innovative ideas that drive your mission further.
So, What’s the Role of Safe Spaces?
Of course, it can also be beneficial to create safe spaces for underrepresented groups of employees. However, psychological safety encompasses entire teams and is a long-term investment to improve and foster inclusion throughout your organization.
The role of safe spaces is providing an opportunity for individuals who do not feel supported to gain a sense of belonging and immediate validation from others. They are places to share grievances and issues with people who are experiencing similar hardships, and offer a chance to connect, process, and build resilience. This is especially true in environments where psychological safety is in the process of developing.
In short, a safe space is a place to be seen, affirmed, and supported in their identity, while psychologically safe workplaces ensure people are heard, respected, empowered, and able open the door for safe work-oriented debate.
That being said, both safe spaces and psychological safety share a common goal: creating a welcoming, inclusive, and supportive environment where everyone can thrive.
How to Cultivate Psychological Safety and Safe Spaces in Your Workplace
Creating inclusive culture means being intentional about both the everyday environment (psychological safety) and the specific support systems (safe spaces) your organization provides. It can mean creating policies and statements, but is ultimately about creating conditions where people feel both supported and empowered.
In line with that, psychological safety and safe spaces work best when they are intentionally designed, reviewed, and reinforced. Additionally, conditions work best when they are tailored to the real experiences of your employees.
HR professionals and leadership teams play an important role in creating inclusive work environments. Their job is to weave psychological safety into the fabric of everyday interactions while also making room for safe spaces that offer solidarity. When these are created with care, they complement each other and create a workplace where employees feel like they belong.
Some actions leaders and HR teams can take to begin to create (or continue to work on) psychologically safe workplaces include:
🗣 Encouraging open dialogue
🛑 Addressing exclusionary behaviors
👂 Actively listening to employees
💡 Normalizing learning from mistakes
🔄 Inviting feedback and acting on it
🧠 Offering regular training on inclusive leadership
Supporting Everyone , Every Day of the Week
Fostering an inclusive workplace means recognizing that people need various levels of support at different times. Psychological safety sets the groundwork to work towards positive day-to-day interaction, and creates spaces where teams can discuss their work, their mistakes, and their ideas openly and freely, with the support of others. On the other hand, safe spaces offer focused environments for healing, solidarity, and connection—especially for those navigating systemic barriers.
Together, these two practices help organizations move beyond surface-level inclusion efforts and towards cultures rooted in trust, care, and equality. Whether you’re just beginning your journey towards psychological safety or looking to strengthen your inclusion strategy, the path begins by listening, learning, and leading with care.
