The Principal, Winbox Consulting, Dr. Deji Osaz has said that more than half of the companies in Nigeria are not psychologically safe.

He made this known at the premier edition of Culture Champion Breakfast Buffet (CCBB), titled: Creating and Sustaining Psychological Safety in Today’s Workplace.

Noting that many things had happened over the years in various workplaces, he said many Human Resource (HR) professionals, team leaders, talent managers and chief executives are toxic to workers and decreasing human performance.

According to him, most organisation leaders have turned themselves into vulture champions rather than culture champions.

Sharing his experience, he said he saw a managing director throw a sandal at a manager during a meeting.

“We’ve had organisations whereby they just give a worker a deadline of some weeks or days to get a job worth of months to do or an organisation whereby they tell you that your opinions don’t matter.”

He noted that workers, who are psychologically safe will be able to give and receive feedback; raise issues and concerns, ask for clarifications, ask difficult questions and offer solutions to problems.

Osaz pointed out that what the country needed was cultural champions in various organisations to better their brand and profit.

Executive Vice President, Operations and Technology at Interswitch Group, Ehia Erhabor, advised workplace leaders to build a good culture for the progress of their organisations and for the coming generation. 

Also, the Chief Operations Officer, CIG Group Africa Business Centre, Victor Adebayo added that sustaining psychological safety in the workplace is not a responsibility of one person.

Adebayo said some people are broken from home and they can’t control their emotions, which definitely makes it psychologically unsafe for such people.

He advised workers not to be afraid to reach out for help when needed and don’t be panicked to re-organise.
   
HR leader, Kaosara Abdulkareem, said organisation culture should be psychological safe for both employees and employers, saying it should be in the Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) of every organisation.

She said: “When we hear psychological safety people think you’re talking about a therapy or you’re talking about one coaching session, but it must be the culture of every organisation.

“Everybody is a leader in their own rights. If you think the responsibility of psychological safety ends in the board or the desk of the management, then we are going nowhere. At every point in time, everybody should talk about psychological safety in everything that we are doing in the organisation.”