AI-first company

Assessment · Culture and speaking-up surveys

Perception of Psychological Safety scale (PPS)

Where do people feel unsafe to speak up: in the organization, the team or one-to-one?

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Who answers Each employee
How long 14 questions
Can you use it? Free to use and adapt
Testing Moderate

Tested properly, but by one team or in one setting. Nobody independent has yet repeated the test.

In short

A 14-question survey that separates three places where people feel safe or unsafe: the organization, their team, and one-to-one relations. Use it to find where the problem sits.

For whoever runs the assessment: an HR or operations lead, an internal project team, or an outside consultant.

What it measures

How safe an employee feels to speak up, at three levels:

  • The organization: its rules and its leadership.
  • The team: the people they work with every day.
  • One-to-one: their relation with a manager or a close colleague.

Most scales measure one of these. This one tells you which level needs attention.

How to use it

  1. Run it anonymously in the teams an AI rollout will reach.
  2. Compare the three levels. A safe team inside an organization that feels unsafe needs a different response from the reverse.
  3. Repeat during the rollout. See protect psychological safety during an AI rollout.

What it does not measure

  • Anything about AI.
  • Large or long-established companies. It has not been tested there.

How it was tested

The authors developed the questions and tested them on employees of 12 start-ups in China. The questions grouped into the three levels, and the scores related to other measures in the way the authors predicted.

Licence and access

The article is open access under CC BY 4.0.

Alternatives

Other assessments with a similar job, and when to prefer each.

Practices that use it

The details

Testing
Moderate Tested in one study, in 12 start-up companies in China, where the three-part structure held and scores related to other measures as expected. No other team or setting has tested it.
Looks at
Organization, Team, Person
How the answers are collected
A survey answered by each employee.
Length
14 questions in 3 groups
Cost
Free
Licence
CC BY 4.0You may translate and adapt the questions if you credit the authors.
Languages
Published in English; tested in China. Other language versions are not established.
By
Wang and Ning, 2024

Sources

  1. Wang and Ning (2024). The employee’s perception of psychological safety: construct dimensions, scale development and validation. BMC Psychology. doi:10.1186/s40359-024-02295-3

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