Speaking up about problems: what managerial openness does not guarantee
A quality deviation, an ambiguous instruction or a coordination problem may be known on the front line without ever reaching the manager. The managerial question is specific: how can reporting these issues become safe and worthwhile enough for employees to speak up?
What the literature establishes
Amy C. Edmondson (1999, Administrative Science Quarterly) identifies an association between team psychological safety and learning behaviours, including discussing errors and seeking feedback. Psychological safety refers to a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. For communication, the issue is therefore not simply knowing how to describe a difficulty, but being able to raise it without anticipating damage to interpersonal relationships.
Openness is judged through interactions
James R. Detert and Ethan R. Burris (2007, Academy of Management Journal) show that managerial openness is associated with employees speaking up to improve how the organisation operates. Their analyses support a mediating role for psychological safety in this relationship. Declaring oneself available is therefore not enough: the way an objection is received sends a signal about the risk involved in speaking up.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that all it takes is to encourage everyone to say whatever they think. Yet these studies justify neither equating psychological safety with an absence of demanding standards nor treating every suggestion as relevant. Receiving a report without discrediting its author remains compatible with rigorous fact-checking and a reasoned refusal. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the data cannot simply count
These field studies are not randomised trials of communication training and do not guarantee identical effects in every organisation. The number of issues reported is itself ambiguous: an increase may reflect more problems, greater freedom to speak or both. A suggestion box or dedicated channel therefore reveals little about communication quality unless we know what happens to the messages received.
A practical check in Fribourg
In Fribourg, SHR’s “Communication” programme can use responses to reported concerns as an exercise, drawing on quality issues in agri-food businesses, the transmission of instructions in bilingual industry or coordination involving the university hub. Over two periods of equal length, before and after the exercise, log the concerns received and calculate the proportion that receive a response within a previously announced deadline, specifying the decision, its rationale and the person responsible for follow-up. Keep a bilingual register where necessary and check with the sender that the response was understood, without recording unnecessary personal data. This indicator measures the traceability of the response process, not psychological safety itself; it nevertheless makes a concrete managerial commitment verifiable. To go further: explore the Communication training in Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Communication in Fribourg
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