Reflections from the Insight Exchange with the Academy of Brain Based Leadership

When I hosted Leonie Hull and Kath Teagle from the Academy of Brain-based Leadership, one question framed the whole session: if your board, executive or regulator asked tomorrow how you know your psychosocial risk controls are working, what evidence would you show them?

Leonie made the point early that many organisations have the policies, training, surveys and EAP in place, yet still can’t show their controls are working. Activity is not the same as control, and control is not the same as effectiveness. Every attendee who answered our opening poll named measuring effectiveness as their biggest challenge.

Psychosocial hazards, psychosocial risk and psychological safety are related, but they’re not interchangeable. If you blur them, it’s easy to assume a psychological safety initiative is controlling work design hazards when it isn’t.

Leonie explained that the brain responds to social threat much as it does to physical threat. When someone’s idea is shut down in a meeting, the thinking, decision-making and collaboration we rely on can go offline. ABL’s S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ model (Security, Autonomy, Fairness, Esteem, Trust and You) explains why the same workplace condition, such as a restructure, can land very differently from person to person. The answer is to use both lenses: control the work condition and understand how people experience it.

A useful distinction was between sensitivity and experience. A S.A.F.E.T.Y.™ Profile shows what people may be sensitive to, while a regular PS Pulse™ shows what they’re experiencing now. The PS Pulse™ only adds value when it feeds into a structured team conversation where actions are agreed, owned and followed up. Measurement without a credible action loop can undermine trust rather than build it.

For me, the most important message for compliance practitioners was a boundary Leonie drew herself. Shared responsibility must never become shifted responsibility. Teaching people to regulate stress is no substitute for fixing excessive workload or unsafe staffing.

The practical advice was clear. Use leading indicators rather than waiting for complaints. Create a dedicated forum where teams discuss results, identify potential risks and assign actions. Then close the loop so people can see that speaking up leads somewhere. As Kath noted, anonymity is what makes honest input possible. Leonie also reminded us that psychological safety is quick to lose and slow to rebuild, so reinforcement matters. Quarterly measurement and check-ins suit most teams, with monthly reviews often required where results are low.