Psychological safety is integral to protecting workers around the clock, on the job, at home and on the road. It’s important for the mental health of employees, of course, but there are also direct correlations between psychological safety and its physical counterpart. When psychological safety is absent—like in workplaces that have a volatile work culture, high levels of ambiguity or that suffer from poor lines of communication—human factors start to amplify the risk of critical errors, injuries and worse. 

The trouble is that while it’s easy to accept the connection between psychological and physical safety, it can be difficult to take actions that tilt the scales in favor of incident prevention. Unlike regulatory requirements and technical systems that can directly contain or eliminate physical hazards, the interventions that protect workers mentally are much more holistic. Things like establishing no-blame accountability or fostering a culture of communication require a combination of soft skills and employee engagement that is much more difficult to measure. But there is at least one set of easy-to-follow best practices that can help enhance psychological safety quickly and strengthen culture in the long term: reliable scheduling.

There is a clear connection between a worker’s schedule and their psychological safety. A routine schedule directly influences a worker’s energy level—if they work too many days in a row, or aren’t provided with enough time between shifts to recover, fatigue is sure to set in. When folks are tired, they are more likely to have their minds wander when performing dangerous tasks, making them prone to making mistakes. In the long term, an unforgiving schedule can push people to the point of burnout, which can lead to the development of disabilities like depression in addition to exacerbating fatigue-induced risk.

But it’s not just the intensity of a work schedule that can be dangerous. Volatility is also a scheduling factor with psychological implications. In terms of direct safety implications, schedule changes can be frustrating for workers, especially if they happen at the last minute. Folks who are upset about their schedules operate under an increased level of stress, which in turn can lead to distraction when undertaking risky actions at work. Meanwhile, an unpredictable schedule is detrimental to the quality of a worker’s home life—if they don’t know when they will be working, they can’t reliably make plans with friends and family or engage in the activities that make them happy. And what’s worse, it’s easy to blame the resulting unhappiness on the people in charge of scheduling.

Reliable schedules, on the other hand, help decrease fatigue while improving the quality of home life for workers, decreasing their stress and helping them plan their lives in fulfilling ways. Fulfillment is a major factor in preventing worker burnout and improving worker retention, and prioritizing reliable schedules in your workplace can be the key to achieving it.

So if you’re looking for a quick and dependable way to improve the psychological safety of your workplace, take out the calendar and put some of these three scheduling best practices into play.

Accommodate – When making a schedule, do your best to accommodate shift preferences and scheduling requests without showing favoritism. Be clear about how workers can request certain shifts, and set a regular deadline for non-emergency schedule changes. You don’t have to accommodate everything, but an organized and transparent approach to schedule requests can go a long way in reducing stress and frustration.

Plan – Once you know what shifts workers prefer, try to maintain a regular schedule that is posted with enough notice for workers to easily manage their time between work and home life. While there are many recommended timelines for this type of planning, a good rule of thumb is to ensure there’s less than 25% variance from each employee’s regular hours, and to post two weeks’ worth of schedules in advance. 

Communicate – Proactively ask workers about personal days they intend to use and vacation plans. In addition to demonstrating an interest in their lives, these interactions will help with schedule planning, allowing you to anticipate variations in the regular schedule well in advance.

With a scheduling system that prioritizes worker fulfillment, psychological safety is sure to get a boost in your workplace. Following these best practices will give you a foundation for a more engaged workforce on the clock, and a safer set of employees both on and off the job.