City of Greenville

As a modern, forward-thinking employer, The City of Greenville in South Carolina has been quick to recognize the importance of Psychological Safety in building an engaged, inclusive, and productive workforce. But, like many organizations, Greenville found that establishing benchmark data and key metrics to measure and track Psychological Safety was a challenging task.

A Local Government Municipality with more than 78,000 residents, The City of Greenville provides community and business support in a wide variety of areas, from parks and recreation to engineering and public safety, all underpinned by the mission of providing high-quality services in an open, professional manner while ensuring progress and excellence. And key to that mission is creating a working environment in which Greenville’s employees are able to grow and thrive.

To drive this, Bryant Davis, Chief Diversity Officer at the City Manager’s Office, made Psychological Safety a cornerstone of his professional coaching and training sessions. “Our organization is focused on raising the level of engagement with our employees. And we recognize the connections between Psychological Safety, employee engagement, and innovation,” he says. “I believe Psychological Safety is a key element of the work I do with ensuring that people are actively engaged in their work and are able to reach their desired potential.”

But despite devoting significant time and energy to fostering Psychological Safety among various teams, Bryant started to feel like he had hit a wall. “Following the completion of focus groups and 1-on-1 discussions with employees, I kept hearing a common theme: fear of speaking up. People were running into workplace challenges and did not feel comfortable voicing them.”

This prompted him to deepen his research into Psychological Safety, attending conferences, watching webinars, and looking for companies that provide assessments and insights—a journey that ultimately led him to Attuned.

For Bryant, establishing benchmark data and metrics around Psychological Safety and engagement was a crucial step in taking his work to the next level. He had previously tried another online assessment, but found that it didn’t provide the in-depth information that was needed to track the growth of Psychological Safety year after year.
 But when he discovered Attuned’s Psychological Safety Assessment, he knew that he had found the perfect match.

Built around a one-of-a-kind employee survey developed by a group of psychologists and experienced Psychological Safety practitioners, Attuned’s Psychological Safety Assessment not only provides an overall Psychological Safety score for each team, but also breaks the results down into six key categories or behaviors that are pillars of the broader concept. These are: Knowledge Sharing, Mistake Reporting, Authentic Self-Expression, Making Decisions, Expressing Disagreement, and Giving Feedback.

As well as giving leaders an unparalleled overview of the Psychological Safety level in their teams, the results of the assessment also provide a more granular look at the specific areas that need to be addressed, as well as highlighting outliers and offering insights into potential—and preventable—future staff turnover.

For their pilot rollout, Bryant gave the assessment to Greenville Zoo’s 35-member team, with outstanding results. In four of the six categories, the team scored a ‘High’ rating, with only “Expressing Disagreement” and “Authentic Self-Expression” scoring “Average”, thus indicating two areas that need attention.

In addition, Bryant says that some employees had been apprehensive about taking the assessment due to worries about the consequences of speaking honestly and uncertainty about how the resultant data might be used—a sign in itself that Psychological Safety could be improved.

The results of the assessment, says Bryant, helped confirm some of the team’s strengths while also helping identify the biggest areas of need. “The management team felt good about the response and wanted to know how the results could be used to create metrics for the team,” he says.

Bryant says that he also valued the level of detail and the easy-to-understand ratings system.
 “This assessment provides multiple layers of data that can be used to shape metrics and allows you to see the variation in responses, which invites conversations about Psychological Safety that can take place in focus groups. Prior to this information, I had speculations with some data points, but this assessment validates the information and provides additional insight for pathways to properly address behaviors and build competency skills amongst teams.”

He adds that the assessment’s ratings system helps foster “a clearer understanding of where employees stand with Psychological Safety” and that “the results can be applied to establishing metrics to improve workplace dynamics and collaboration.”

Armed with the results of the assessment, and Attuned’s accompanying recommendations, Bryant has wasted no time in putting these newly acquired insights into action.

“I am working on leadership development and coaching through 1-on-1s to assist supervisors in becoming more relationship-oriented with the staff. This will be a way to re-establish motivating factors in the workplace and ensure employees are engaged,” he says. “In addition, our hope is to utilize Attuned with additional departments to set metrics for Psychological Safety and educate more teams and employees on its relevance in the workplace.”

As well as this, Bryant is doubling down on the strengths highlighted by the assessment, and using the learnings around these to replicate that success in other areas. 
“I would like to build on Giving Feedback and further tie it to Mistake Reporting, which we see trending in the same direction,” he says. “I will be working to help the team understand that building the capacity and competency to provide authentic feedback can lead to fewer mistakes in the workplace and a safer environment to discuss challenges and issues.”

Ultimately, Bryant says that using Attuned’s Psychological Safety Assessment has been a significant milestone in The City of Greenville’s journey towards creating an environment in which employees can really shine—which is also great news for the city’s residents.

“This assessment with Attuned is our first step in measuring our Psychological Safety and employee engagement at the city. We desire to be an employer of choice while recruiting and retaining the best talent in the state and beyond. With the assessment information, we will begin placing metrics for engagement, Psychological Safety, as well as recruitment and retention,” says Bryant. “If we can establish a basis for Psychological Safety and work to improve it, we create the opportunity for creativity and innovation to flourish in the workplace, to provide a more effective and efficient local government for constituents.”

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