Abstract:

Psychological safety plays a vital role in organizational life. The human need to feel safe at work to grow, learn, contribute, and perform effectively should be an utmost priority in schools in a rapidly changing world. Dissatisfaction with those aspects in the workplace could lead to fear, anxiety, stress, and feeling unsafe, which are counterproductive to job satisfaction and performance and meeting the organization's needs.[3] [1] [5] This paper identifies and analyzes which among the dimensions of the basic psychological needs satisfaction[9] influences the psychological safety[2] [3] [6] of workers in a public higher education institution setting. A survey was conducted on 79 teaching and non-teaching personnel. The responses gathered through the 28-item questionnaire[2] [3] [6] were coded, summarized, and analyzed using SPSS 23. [4] Multiple Regression was done to verify which among the need for Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness influence most employees' psychological safety. From the results, only Competence and Relatedness showed a relationship with employees' psychological safety at P= .025 and P= .000, respectively. However, Relatedness has more effect size at B= 0.443. This means that satisfaction of the basic psychological need on Relatedness significantly affects the employees' perception of psychological safety in the workplace. This result implies that the quality of social and external esteem needs satisfaction such as relationships or involvement with friends, co-workers, and administrators highly impact the psychological well-being of employees.

References:
[1] Duff, B. K. (2013). Differences in assessments of organizational school climate between teachers and administrators. Doctoral dissertation. Available from Proquest Dissertations and The-ses Global. (UMI No. 3559002)
[2] Edmondson A. (2009) Psychological safety and learning behaviors in teams.http://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf
[3] Edmondson and Lei. (2014) Psychological safety history renaissance future. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091305
[4] George, D. & Mallery, P. (2003). SPSS for Windows step by step: A simple guide and reference.11.0 update (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon
[5] Kouzes, James and Barry Posner (2010). The truth about leadership: the no fads, fact-of-the-matter facts you need to know. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
[6] Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78.

Keywords:

Psychological safety, basic psychological needs satisfaction, employees, public higher education institution.