The importance of psychological safety for safety and intention to leave

The purpose of the study is to examine the perceived level of psychological safety within the Swedish Armed Forces and whether there are any links between this perception and, on the one hand, operational safety and, on the other, employees’ intention to leave the organisation.

Deficiencies in the safety culture

Improving safety standards in the Swedish Armed Forces’ military training and exercise activities is currently a recognised and prioritised area, as an excessively high incidence of hazardous situations, incidents and accidents has been reported across several military activities. At the same time, shortcomings have been identified in the prevailing safety culture at certain regiments and units.

High staff turnover

Alongside this challenge, some units are also struggling with high staff turnover and difficulties in attracting new personnel. From a strategic workforce planning perspective, both of these focus areas are therefore considered highly important to ensure that the Swedish Armed Forces can carry out the activities required and planned for the coming years.

Psychological safety

Psychological safety is a widely recognised concept that has been shown to promote, among other things, learning and innovation within organisations. A psychologically safe group is characterised by respect for one another’s competence, genuine interest in and openness towards colleagues as individuals, positive intentions towards one another, and the courage to challenge one another and engage in constructive conflict.

Despite the substantial empirical evidence supporting the important role that psychological safety plays in several aspects of modern working life, relatively few studies have examined its relationship with workplace safety or how decisive a lack of psychological safety may be in influencing employees to seek employment elsewhere.

The study is an inductive mixed-methods study, adopting an exploratory approach in which both quantitative and qualitative data collection methods will be used to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomena under investigation and the relationships between them within the context of a defence organisation.