About Psychologically Safe Team Assessment
What is the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment?
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment is a free online set of resources designed to assess and address your team’s perception of inclusion, interactions with each other and leadership support. Any team leader can use this resource. Team members complete the assessment, and the tool generates a report that highlights both team strengths and areas for improvement, with many free and practical resources provided to take action.
There is no medical, health or personality information collected. This assessment focuses only on the experiences and perceptions of members of your team.
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment is meant to be part of continual improvement of teams and can be accessed as many times as desired.
How was the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment tool developed?
The items for the assessment tool were developed through empirical and grey literature reviews and consultation in the fields of psychological health and safety, positive psychology, and inclusion. Researcher’s at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario validated the assessment and development was commissioned by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life.
Who can use the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment?
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment was designed to be used by team leaders in organizations, associations, governments and institutions, regardless of business type. This assessment is intended to be completed by all employees, students, contractors and volunteers that report directly to a team leader. The free resources shared in the report are downloadable, easy to use, accessible and require no special training.
What is the cost of the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment?
All of the tools and resources are provided at no cost for any team leader to use. There is absolutely nothing to buy, but there is a cost in terms of your time and effort to take action on the results. The total cost for your initiative will depend on the actions you choose to take for improvement. Your report will include many free resources that can help you take action, even on a limited budget.
What time and resources are required to implement the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment successfully?
Signing up for an account and setting up the assessment should take less than 20 minutes. The assessment itself takes only 15 to 20 minutes for each team member to complete. And it takes only minutes to close the assessment and generate your report.
Although the assessment is designed to be quick and efficient, the work to analyze the results and effect sustainable change are part of an ongoing journey.
What is the role of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS)?
CCOHS protects the confidentiality of information provided in completion of the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment. They host and maintain the website in English and French.
Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, and CCOHS collaborate to increase use of the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment by raising awareness of the free resources as a leading approach for assessing and addressing psychological health and safety in the workplace.
Is this a research study?
Analysis of Psychologically Safe Team Assessment data is intended only for quality improvement purposes, to enhance the validity and utility of this assessment for organizations. Quality improvement activities are not defined as research. Any formal research study would require explicit prior permission from users, as well as ethics approval.
Using Psychologically Safe Team Assessment
Do all team members need to sign up for an account?
No, only the team leader who is planning to administer the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment needs to sign up for an account. Each dashboard account is limited to one team leader. This team leader will generate and email the assessment link to team members. You cannot have more than one team leader per account.
What if team members don’t have access to a computer? Is there a paper version of the online assessment?
Yes. You can distribute paper copies of the assessment and manually enter the results of each assessment. To print copies of the assessment, select the Team Assessment Link in your Dashboard. You will find the link to the assessment, which you can then print. To help protect the anonymity and confidentiality of team members completing the assessment by paper, we suggest that you designate a place accessible to all team members where the assessments will be made available, as well as a locked box, similar to a ballot box, where completed assessments can be dropped. Once you are ready to enter the assessments, collect any completed paper assessments from the box and enter the data manually by visiting the assessment link. If you need to enter any additional assessments after you close your assessment, open the Completed Assessments section in your Dashboard and click Re-open Assessment.
Can more than one person take the assessment at once?
Yes, all of your team members can take the assessment at the same time. The approach of having all team members complete the assessment at the same time during working hours is ideal in terms of optimizing participation and ensuring your results are reliable.
Can I run a French or bilingual assessment?
Yes, a French version of the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment is available. Click on the Français link in the top right corner. You can run a bilingual assessment using one assessment link. You will need to instruct your team members to open the link and then toggle to the French view to complete the assessment. All the assessment responses – English and French – will be captured in the same report. Note that this resource is only available in English and French at this time.
How long can we keep an assessment open?
You decide how long you wish to keep your assessment open. By default, each assessment closes automatically at 11:59 pm your local time, three weeks from when it was created, but you can edit the closing date as needed. Your assessment results will still be available after the closing date, but no more responses can be added.
Can I customize the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment?
No, this free resource cannot be modified.
If the language does not suit your organization, you are encouraged to clarify definitions and/or language with your team members ahead of sending the link to the assessment. Letting your team members know in advance how to interpret the questions can be helpful. You can review all assessment statements hereopens a new window.
If you'd like to contract the services of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety to create a modified version, please contact usopens a new window. Alternatively, you could use a separate survey instrument to create additional customized questions or statements for your team members to answer.
How can my team members provide additional or qualitative feedback?
There is no means for team members to submit additional or qualitative feedback within the assessment due to potential impacts on the confidentiality of the assessment. We encourage team leaders to consider providing additional opportunities for communication and dialogue, such as a suggestion box or other surveys.
What do I do with the results after completing the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment?
The assessment allows for identification of specific leader strategies to support psychological health and safety in the team. After completing the assessment and generating your report, the development of an action plan to improve specific strategies should be developed in collaboration with your team. Many free resources are provided in the assessment report to help you take action.
Data, Privacy, and Security
How is confidentiality protected?
Many steps are taken to protect individual confidentiality. Names are not collected when the survey is completed and are also not required on manually completed surveys. The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety hosts the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment and protects all data on its secure server. Only aggregate results are available to the organizational administrator, not individual assessment responses.
For the sole purpose of improving this resource, Canada Life Assurance Company, as part of its Workplace Strategies for Mental Health initiative, will receive a monthly usage report without any identification of individual users or specific organizations.
What happens to the information provided by the team leaders and members?
Information provided by the team leader and all Psychologically Safe Team Assessment data will be kept on a secure server in Canada and information specific to the relevant organization and any individual is strictly confidential. The data will be kept anonymous and reported in the aggregate only; individual-level data will not be released without consent. This data will be kept for up to seven years, and then securely deleted. The Canada Life Assurance Company, as part of its Workplace Strategies for Mental Health initiative, and researchers will receive a monthly report of Psychologically Safe Team Assessment users. No individual users or organizations will be identified.
