About 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.
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment is meant to be part of a continual improvement process for teams and can be used as many times as needed.
The Psychologically Safe Team Assessment was designed to be used by team leaders in organizations, not-for-profits, associations, governments and institutions, regardless of business type. In fact, this assessment can be used by temporary, project-based, or even sports teams who interact with each other on a regular basis. This assessment is intended to be completed by everyone who contributes to the team, including 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.
No, the team leader should not complete the assessment. This assessment aims to capture the current experiences of team members to help leaders understand team strengths and areas for improvement.
All of the tools and resources are provided at no cost for any team leader to use. There is absolutely nothing to buy, but you will need to invest 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.
Signing up for an account and setting up the assessment should take less than 20 minutes. The assessment itself takes about 15 to 20 minutes for each team member to complete. It takes only minutes to close the assessment and generate your report.
Administering the assessment is designed to be quick and efficient. The time to analyze the results and implement effective and sustainable improvements will vary by team and are part of an ongoing journey.
CCOHS protects the confidentiality of information submitted through the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment. CCOHS also hosts and maintains the website in English and French and provides client support related to any technical or account management issues.
Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, and CCOHS work together to increase use of the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment by raising awareness of the free resource as a leading approach for assessing and addressing psychological health and safety in the workplace.
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. Researchers at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario validated the assessment and the development was commissioned by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life.
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.
This tool is part of a suite of free resources to help advance psychological health and safety at work. The suite includes four resources:
This suite of tools is offered through a partnership between Canada Life’s Workplace Strategies for Mental Health and the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS).
Using Psychologically Safe Team Assessment
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.
Yes. You can print and distribute paper copies of the assessment and then manually enter the results of each assessment. To print copies of the assessment, click and open the Team Assessment Link from your dashboard. Copy the Assessment Link and paste it into a URL bar to open your 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.
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.
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.
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 more responses cannot be added.
When you have received the desired number of responses, close the assessment on your Dashboard Home page. Alternatively, the assessment will automatically close once you reach the end date. The team assessment is open for three weeks by default, but you can adjust the date in the Active Assessments section.
You must close active assessments before generating a report. Once closed, locate your assessment in the Completed Assessments section and select View Full Report. You can also select View Team Report for a results-only version you can share with your team.
Please note, you cannot generate reports if less than three members complete the assessment. This is to safeguard confidentiality.
The Full Report includes Explore Further sections for every assessment statement with suggested strategies and resources to help you take action on any areas you wish to address. The shorter Team Report only includes the results.
This website hosts the assessments and protects the confidentiality of your data. Within our website and in the reports you will generate, we provide links to many free and useful resources to help you take action on your results. Tools, guides, templates, videos and materials are all available in English and French at no cost. They are housed at our various partner sites so they can be regularly reviewed and updated.
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.
Alternatively, you could use a separate survey instrument to create additional customized questions or statements for your team members to answer.
We encourage team leaders to consider providing additional opportunities for communication and dialogue, such as a suggestion box or other surveys.
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.
The Full Report helps to identify specific strategies to support psychological health and safety in the team. After completing the assessment and generating your report, an action plan to improve specific strategies should be developed in collaboration with your team. Many free resourcesopens a new window are provided in the assessment report to help you take action.
A Team Report is also available for download and includes only the results without the strategies and is intended to share with your team members.
You can update your account information or transfer your account to another person by updating the relevant details on the Edit Account page in your Dashboard. If you transfer your account, the new account owner will have access to all existing assessment information and reports.
Data, Privacy, and Security
Team members want to feel safe to share their responses anonymously. Many steps are taken to protect individuals’ confidentiality, including:
- You are not able to generate a report if fewer than three members complete the survey as it is more likely that individuals can be identified.
- There is no medical, health or personal information collected.
- This assessment focuses only on the experiences and perceptions of your team members.
- Names and email addresses are not collected when the survey is completed online and are also not required when manually entering completed surveys.
- The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety hosts the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment and protects all data on its secure server in Canada.
- Only aggregate results, not individual assessment responses, are available.
- 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 usage report, when requested, without any identification of individual users or specific organizations.
Information provided by the team leader or respondents and all Psychologically Safe Team Assessment data will be kept on a secure server in Canada by CCOHS, 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 report, when requested, of Psychologically Safe Team Assessment users. No individual users or organizations will be identified.
As part of our commitment to protect confidentiality, we only include aggregate data in the report. Raw data would display individual survey responses which could lead to the identification of participants. For this reason, we cannot provide the raw data.
