When Safety Is Just a Word: What Your Team Actually Needs to Feel Safe

Aug 19

You’ve probably heard the phrase "we want everyone to feel safe here" tossed around in team meetings, onboarding manuals, and leadership retreats. Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. And that’s not a bad thing—safety should be at the heart of any mission-driven organization.

But let’s be real: in a lot of workplaces, especially in nonprofits, “safety” has become a buzzword. A placeholder. A soft, well-intentioned promise that doesn’t always hold up when the real stuff hits the fan.

Because safety isn’t a vibe. It’s a system.

It’s not about how kind your leadership sounds, or how many wellness webinars your staff has access to. It’s about how predictable, accountable, and structurally sound your culture is. It's how your team feels in the moments that actually matter—the ones where the stakes are high.

If you’re serious about trauma-informed care, equity, and inclusion, then your definition of safety HAS to expand. Because most people won't tell you when they feel unsafe. But they'll show you. So, let’s talk about how to notice—and fix—what’s actually going on.

Happy Feelings ≠ Safe Nervous Systems

Let’s start here, because this is where so many well-meaning people get it wrong.

Feeling "happy" is not the same as feeling safe. Someone can love their coworkers, enjoy team lunches, and feel proud of their mission—and still be carrying a low-level hum of anxiety every time they have to speak up, set a boundary, or ask for help.

Safety isn’t about how things feel on the surface. It’s about how your nervous system responds in real time. Safety shows up when people can:

Say something uncomfortable without being ostracized
Ask for what they need without being shamed
Try something new without fearing punishment
Make a mistake and still feel like they belong

Most of the time, you won’t know your staff doesn’t feel safe until something breaks. Why? Because people who’ve been hurt before (read: most people) are often experts at looking "fine" while quietly self-protecting.

If you’re only measuring satisfaction—or worse, if you’re assuming no news is good news—you’re missing what really matters.

Why “Open Door Policies” Don’t Create Safety

Let’s talk about a common trap: the open door policy.

On paper, it sounds great. "My door’s always open!" But in practice, it feels like a trap, because:

If someone doesn’t trust that their feedback will be heard, respected, or acted on… they’re not going to walk through that door.
If the org has no track record of applying feedback—especially from people with less positional power—then the message is clear: feedback is for you to feel heard, not for us to actually listen to.
If staff don’t know who to go to, or what kind of issue is "worth bringing up," or if they’ve never seen someone successfully navigate a concern like theirs? They’re not going to take the risk. They’ll internalize it. Or they’ll leave.

Safety isn’t about having access to leaders. It’s about knowing that the systems around you are clear, responsive, and not dependent on the moods or preferences of one person.

Safety = Structure, Not Just Softness

Another misunderstanding: safety really just means being "nice" and not hurting people’s feelings.

Spoiler: it doesn’t.

Sometimes, the safest thing a leader can do is challenge someone. Speak the truth when it’s hard. Call out a pattern. Set a limit. What matters is how that’s done, and whether the foundation beneath it feels fair, consistent, and transparent.

Safety doesn’t come from avoiding conflict or coddling discomfort. It comes from creating a culture where people know what to expect, how decisions get made, and how to recover from harm.

That means:

Owning your mistakes
Creating space for repair
Naming when harm has happened
Following through on accountability
Welcoming disagreement without retaliation

If safety in your organization means “no one ever gets uncomfortable,” you’ve built comfort—not care. And those are not the same thing.

How to Audit Your Org’s Safety

You can’t fix what you can’t see. And many of the signs of psychological (un)safety are subtle, systemic, and easy to overlook—especially if you’re in a leadership role. Here’s some things to reflection on:

Written communication: Are emails filled with urgency, vague expectations, or passive-aggressive language? Do staff feel pressure to respond immediately, even after hours?
In Meetings: Who speaks the most? Who never talks? Who interrupts? Are meetings being used for decision-making, or just performance? Does anyone ever ask clarifying questions—or are they too afraid to look confused?
PTO: Is PTO something people feel guilty for taking? Are sick days viewed as a nuisance? Is rest framed as weakness, or earned only after burnout?
Accommodations: Do staff feel safe disclosing what they need? Or do they worry it’ll be seen as "too much"? Are accommodations formalized, or handled inconsistently?
Creativity: Do staff offer ideas freely—or do they wait to see what leadership thinks first? Are mistakes treated as learning moments, or liabilities?
Body Language: Who tenses up when certain topics come up? Who deflates when a specific leader speaks? You don’t need a PhD to read the room.

These are ALL sources of data. And they’re more honest than a staff survey will ever be.

Signs People Are Self-Protecting

Here’s what it looks like when someone doesn’t feel safe, even if they’re not saying it:

They stop offering feedback
They downplay their needs
They say yes when they mean no
They defer to authority even when they disagree
They avoid meetings, conflict, or visibility
They take on extra work to avoid being perceived as “difficult”

This doesn’t mean those staff are the problem. It means your culture is suggesting that the consequences for being authentic are worse than pretending.

Questions That Actually Get Real Answers

If you want to understand how safe your team feels, don’t just ask, “Do you feel safe?” That question rarely works, and they’ll probably just tell you what they think you want to hear.

Instead, try:

When do you feel like speaking up about a concern at work would not be well received?
When might you feel unsafe on this team or any time at work?
What could I do differently that would better support your success at work?
What would need to be different for you to feel supported to do your best at work?
If you were being bullied at work, how would you want witnesses to respond?
What is the most significant challenge you face to getting your job done well?
If you were the head of this organization, what might you do differently?
How would you describe our organizational culture?

The magic isn’t just asking these questions— it’s in responding to them. Asking without action only reinforces that nothing will change. If you’re not ready to do something about what you hear, you shouldn’t ask.