Frequently Asked Questions

The Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment is a set of free resources to help organizations and leaders assess and address strategies pertaining to psychological health and safety. It is based on the requirement for competent leadership as described in the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Leaders complete a self-assessment which helps identify positive strategies they are currently using consistently as well as those they could implement to promote psychological health and safety.

• Organization-wide approach - The assessment can be assigned to all or select leaders by an administrator authorized by an organization.
• Individual leader approach - There is a separate option that allows individual leaders to confidentially take the assessment for their own learning and development.
• Employee feedback - The optional employee feedback version obtains perspectives from the leader's direct reports. This helps to see whether the employees are aware of the extent to which these strategies are being implemented. Any discrepancy in perception provides an excellent opportunity for team discussion and engagement towards a psychologically safer workplace.

This is not a personality or character assessment. It focuses only on the extent to which strategies known to support psychologically safe work are being implemented.

The Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment is meant to be part of continual improvement of leaders and can be accessed as many times as desired.

Organizations and leaders can use this resource to support and enhance psychological health and safety in the workplace.

This resource is recommended for:

• organizations through a designated administrator who sends the assessment to all or select leaders and their direct reports to help support continual improvement in psychological health and safety
• individual leaders who strive to provide a psychologically safe workplace

Like all tools developed by Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment tools and resources are provided at no cost, but dedicated time and effort are required for this process to succeed. The Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment also includes ideas that are low-cost or free to implement. Most ideas require a small investment of time or a change in communication approach.

The items for the assessment tool were developed through empirical and grey literature reviews and consultation with key stakeholders in the area of workplace mental health, members of the Human Resources Professionals Association, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, and Mindful Employer Canada.

CCOHS protects the confidentiality of information submitted through the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment. CCOHS also hosts and maintains the website in English and French and provides client support for questions about content as well as technical or account issues.

Workplace Strategies for Mental Health, compliments of Canada Life, and CCOHS work together to increase the use of the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment by raising awareness of the free resource as a tool to ensure a psychologically safe work environment for employees.

This tool is part of a suite of free resources to help advance psychological health and safety at work. The suite includes:

• Guarding Minds at Work: An online assessment tool and comprehensive resources to help employers assess and address psychological health and safety at the organizational level.
• Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment: An online assessment tool and comprehensive resources to help leaders evaluate their current psychological health and safety strategies and engage in continual improvement.
• Psychologically Safe Team Assessment: An online assessment tool and comprehensive resources to help team leaders assess and improve their strategies to support team cohesion and inclusion.
• Supporting Employee Success: A tool to help employees meet job expectations, including those returning to work or needing accommodation.

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).

There are two types of accounts that can be created: an administrator account and an individual leader account.

An administrator account can be used by an authorized administrator to send the assessment to all or select leaders in the organization to advance psychological health and safety in the workplace as part of leader development. Only the authorized administrator will need to create an account by selecting “Create an account” from the homepage and selecting the “I am an authorized administrator who wants to send the assessment to leaders in my organization.” The administrator will then send a unique link to each leader to complete the assessment.

A leader account can be used by an individual leader to support their own learning, development and continuous improvement in psychologically safe leadership competencies. Individual leaders can select "Create an account" from the homepage and select the option “I am a leader and want to take the assessment” for a personal and confidential account.

The leader self-assessment and employee feedback version each take approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Yes, a French version of the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment is available. Select the Français link in the top right corner. You can run a bilingual assessment using one link. You will need to instruct your employees to open the link and then toggle to the French view to complete the assessment.

Yes, you can. From your Dashboard, select the Edit Information tab. In the Manage Leaders section, select Browse to upload an Excel spreadsheet file (.xls or .xlsx, maximum file size of 2MB).

Yes, the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment can be taken multiple times. If the organization has an administrator assigning the link, the administrator can send a new link whenever a leader is ready to do it again. Alternatively, an individual account could be set up by a leader in addition to their organization’s account. The results from an individual account are not shared with the administrator. Leaders taking the assessment on their own can retake the assessment as many times as they wish through their individual account. Assessments taken before July 2022 cannot be compared to assessments taken during or after July 2022. For more information, see the “Why can’t I compare my January 2022 results with my August 2022 results?” question below.

It is recommended the assessment be completed on a yearly or semi-yearly basis, coupled with a tailored action plan to enhance leadership strategies. This allows for continual improvement.

Micro-changes that are easily integrated with existing leadership responsibilities can be more effective and sustainable than trying to implement many changes at once. Start with those known to be doable and those that can have the greatest positive impact. Once these become part of the regular leadership approach, an updated assessment can identify additional positive strategies to be considered.

Assessments taken before July 2022: Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment uses a five point scale which allows the respondent to express how much they agree or disagree with each statement in the assessment as follows: 1=strongly disagree; 2=disagree; 3=neither agree or disagree; 4=agree; 5=strongly agree. Assessments taken during or after July 2022: Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment uses a five point scale which allows the respondent to express the extent to which each statement is occurring as follows: 1=never; 2=rarely; 3=sometimes; 4=often; 5=always.

On July 1, 2022, the assessment scale was updated from agreement (strongly disagree to strongly agree) to frequency (never to always). Because of this change, the results won’t be comparable.

The change from an agreement (strongly disagree to strongly agree) to frequency (never to always) scale helps to more accurately assess the extent to which leaders are implementing strategies known to protect psychological safety. While most supervisors and managers agree with the strategies, many do not have the time or resources to consistently apply them. Assessing how frequently these strategies are applied allows the leader to create their own action plan for improvement or inform their organization on the need for necessary time, resources or skills.

If you completed an assessment prior to this change, and you complete another one now, it is expected that the new results will appear to be “worse”, but in fact are just more accurate. Strongly agreeing that a strategy is important is quite different than stating that you always use it in every situation. It’s more likely that any leader’s answer will be sometimes or often rather than always. This doesn’t mean your leadership has gotten worse. It means you have a more accurate representation of where there is room for improvement.

Only administrator accounts have the ability to re-open assessments. For leader accounts, once the assessment is closed, it cannot be re-opened. Leaders can only have one active assessment at a time.

Note that due to the assessment scale change, any assessments completed before July 2022 cannot be re-opened. Only assessments completed after July 2022 can be re-opened.

Fairness and integrity are included in the report because they are essential to psychologically safe leadership. They influence how employees experience every other leadership behaviour. However, fairness and integrity are not assessed as a separate domain. Instead, they are woven throughout the other domains and reflected in the key statements drawn from each one. In this context, fairness and integrity refer to how employees perceive your personal character, including whether you are unbiased, consistent, respectful, and trustworthy in how you lead.

Our website hosts the self-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. All resources are available in English and French at no cost. They are housed on our partner sites so they can be regularly reviewed and updated.

For Leader accounts, your results are only visible to you. For Administrator accounts, the leader’s self-assessment will be available to the administrator.

If you are gathering employee feedback, each employee will receive the same link and their responses are anonymous. No personal information is collected for the employee feedback. We recommend having at least three respondents to reduce the likelihood that individuals can be identified. There may be instances where the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment shares only aggregate information from all users without any personal identifiers, with qualified independent researchers.

Note that this website is hosted by the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). All personal information created, held or collected by CCOHS is protected by the Privacy Act, meaning that you will be informed of the purpose for which your personal information is being collected and how to exercise your right to access that information. For more information, please see the Terms and Conditions.