Culture template

Psychological Safety Survey Template

A team-level survey based on the established psychological safety construct: admitting mistakes, raising problems, disagreeing with seniors, asking for help, and taking interpersonal risk. The single best leading indicator of whether your other surveys are telling you the truth.

14 questions 3 min to complete Twice a year All employees, at team level

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When to use it

Run it at team level, twice a year. It is also the right survey to run first if you suspect your engagement scores are unrealistically positive — low psychological safety produces flattering results everywhere else.

The full question set

Copy these as they are, or adapt the wording to your organisation — just keep it identical between waves, because changing a question resets its trend line.

Mistakes

1.If I make a mistake on this team, it is not held against me.1–5 scale
2.When something goes wrong here, we focus on the cause rather than who to blame.1–5 scale

Voice

1.I can raise problems and tough issues with my team.1–5 scale
2.I can disagree with my manager in a meeting without consequences.1–5 scale
3.Bad news travels upward here without being softened.1–5 scale
4.I have held back a concern at work in the last three months.Yes / No
5.If yes — what stopped you from raising it?Open text

Inclusion

1.People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.1–5 scale

Risk

1.It is safe to take a risk on this team.1–5 scale

Help

1.It is easy to ask other members of this team for help.1–5 scale
2.I would feel comfortable saying 'I don't know' in front of my team.1–5 scale

Trust

1.Nobody on this team would deliberately act to undermine my work.1–5 scale

Value

1.My unique skills and talents are valued and used on this team.1–5 scale

Open

1.What would make it easier to speak up on your team?Open text

How to run it well

Report at team level; company-wide averages hide the exact variation you need to see.
Never share individual responses with a team lead, and suppress teams below five responses.
Give managers the result privately first, with support on how to open the conversation.
Have each team discuss its own score together — the conversation changes the score more than any policy.
Re-measure in six months; safety moves slowly and responds to behaviour, not announcements.

Questions people ask

What is psychological safety?

A shared belief within a team that it is safe to take interpersonal risks — to admit a mistake, ask a basic question, disagree with someone senior, or flag bad news. It is a property of teams, not individuals, which is why it must be measured and acted on at team level.

Why does psychological safety matter more than most engagement metrics?

Because it gates the accuracy of everything else. On a team where speaking up is costly, your engagement survey, your incident reports and your project status updates are all systematically optimistic. Fixing safety first makes every other measurement more truthful.

How do you improve a low score?

Almost entirely through visible leader behaviour: asking questions you do not know the answer to, saying when you were wrong, responding to bad news with curiosity rather than blame, and thanking the person who raised it. Process changes help at the margin; the modelling does the work.

Related templates

Leadership

Upward feedback that managers can actually act on

Inclusion

Inclusion measured by experience, not by policy

Engagement

The 15-question monthly pulse

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