Mark McBride-Wright is founder and managing director, EqualEngineers, and Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor, Inclusive Engineering Leadership, University College London. 

Engineers aren’t strangers to physical safety. It’s drilled into us from the moment we embark on an engineering career: our responsibility to make sure our work doesn’t result in accidents or damage is clearly defined. For higher-risk environments, the standards have even greater gravitas. Safety engineers, in particular, must adhere to procedures and come up with system designs to protect people and property and to preserve life.  

Engineers identify and correct potential hazards by inspecting facilities, machinery, and safety equipment; evaluate various industrial control mechanisms’ effectiveness; and ensure that buildings or products comply with health and safety regulations, paying careful attention after conducting an inspection that uncovered required changes. We also direct and oversee the installation of safety devices on machinery and review employee safety programs, recommending necessary improvements as needed. 

This ability to design out risk is relatively easier when it comes to physical safety. Risks can be mathematically quantified based on their probability of occurrence and the likelihood of their severity. We define what measures we’ve taken to reduce risks, and then for any risk remaining, what residual measures we’ve put in place to ensure minimal impact in case an unsafe incident arises. Of course, the target is always zero.  

But how easy is it to quantify psychological safety?  

The Link between Physical and Psychological Safety 
Data on physical injuries in the workplace are easy to produce. Injuries are obvious and illness is consistently reported—people aren’t afraid to ask for help when their toe is broken or a chemical spill has burnt their arm. However, when it comes to talking about their mental health, only half of engineers are comfortable opening up about their stress with an employer, as identified by the Masculinity in Engineering Research report commissioned by EqualEngineers. 

Given that suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50,[1] the male-majority engineering and technology sector has an undeniable mental health crisis.[2] Since men are 3.5 times more likely than women to say they’ve self-harmed or considered taking their life,[2] and the engineering and technology sector is a predominantly male profession, that means our industry is suffering more than most.  

What’s worse: no one is talking about it. 

There are several ways we can try to address this worrying trend. The first is to create parity between physical and psychological safety. All people are susceptible to both physical and psychological harm. But engineers hyperfocus on physical safety and largely overlook psychological safety. At best, it’s addressed in a tokenistic app or clause in an employment benefits package. Second, the culture must support open, respectful communication. In a recent survey over 70 percent of engineers reported that men are expected to control their emotions, not show weakness, and not cry openly.[2] But encouraging communication around mental health is complex and multifaceted. 

How Do Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Encourage Psychological Safety?
Not all partnerships work out—think Heinz and McDonald’s, Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, or LEGO and Shell. Although these historical partnerships started out well, priorities shifted, the landscape changed, and business relationships failed.  

When it comes to health and safety, the perfect life partner is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). When these two initiatives work together, they create tangible change in the form of a positive workplace culture, improving both performance outcomes and workforce physical and psychological well-being.[3] 

This is because DEI supports individuals from marginalized groups and encourages them to look out for one another. Its principles can be applied more broadly to the workforce at large. When an engaged workforce cares about one another, safety and well-being increase. It’s why asking ourselves “how safe do we feel?” is an important question, especially in the engineering industry where we’re more at risk. 

Historical workplace accidents led to regulation in workplace health and safety and the development of cultural models. For example, DuPont created the Bradley Curve,[4] which shows that safety improves when workers both take responsibility for their own safety and look out for one another.  

The Bradley Curve defines four distinct workplace cultures and their association with lost-time incident rates (figure 1): 

1. Our natural reaction to risk – instinct 

2. What we’re told we need to care about by employers – dependent 

3. Self-preservation and personal responsibility through awareness training – independent  

4. Looking out for each other through shared responsibility – interdependent 

The fourth is the highest level of safety conscience companies can achieve, resulting in the lowest number of accidents. Getting to stage four involves a culture shift, where everyone in an organization perceives safety as a shared goal and value.  

The Bradley Curve can be applied to psychological safety to bring that same shared goal for each other’s well-being and mental health in the following ways: 

1. Identify our instinct to protect our mental well-being, and whether we accept thoughts of self-harm or suicidal ideation as the “norm” or don’t see the bias against communicating our stress. 

2. Take care of our well-being only because we’ve been told to by management through mental health training or occupational health initiatives. 

3. Take an active and independent role in our own psychological safety through awareness of the impact of poor mental health on our ability to work safely and/or take care of ourselves. 

4. Look out for other people’s psychological safety and see the well-being of our peers as a shared responsibility. 

Making psychological safety an interdependent responsibility in an organization yields the best outcomes, and DEI is a great way to start those conversations and embed a long-term strategy that supports that journey—focusing on inclusion in particular.  

DEI initiatives were born to offer safe spaces and give voices to those from marginalized groups in the workplace. Majority groups (used here to refer to those with power) have strength in numbers and people in minoritized groups often fear retribution for speaking out. But even those who aren’t in a minoritized group admit to not interfering because, at worst, they fear for their personal safety (e.g., retaliation) and, at best, don’t want to be labeled “the politically correct police” or “woke brigade.” 

Psychological safety is the ability to show and express oneself without negative repercussions. Everyone in the workplace has to feel safe to speak up, and that depends on inclusion and psychological safety.  

What Are the Barriers to Embedding DEI in a Majority-Male Culture?
In a male-dominated profession like engineering, the culture is more likely to tolerate microaggressions and bullish behavior. Workplace culture is hard enough to call out or stand up to, and when it comprises a large majority, the prospect of creating or even calling for change is often daunting.  

But lack of psychological safety means 4 in 5 engineers experience emotional or mental health issues they can’t talk about. In the United States males accounted for nearly 70 percent of all suicides in 2021, with the highest rate among middle-aged White men.[5] We’re failing men if we don’t create a culture in which they feel psychologically safe and supported. After all, we spend most of our life at work, which means employers are in a unique position to identify and support us. 

Sadly, only 31 percent of engineers feel included in the environment they work in, and less than a quarter feel comfortable to discuss challenges such as depression or financial stress with colleagues or their superiors.[2]  

How can we bridge this gap in the engineering sector? 

Using DEI to Ensure Psychological Safety for All
There is a disconnect between the intention of inclusion efforts and how men experience inclusion.  

Engaging anyone in anything requires communication. So the first port-of-call is to ask questions. The key is a willingness to listen nonjudgmentally and actually hear what people are saying, not just listen with the intent to speak or defend our positions. The best DEI initiatives work well because the people from marginalized communities who fought hard to secure their safe spaces highlighted the numerous benefits and continued the conversation in a positive way.[3] 

To put it bluntly, people are suffering and even dying because of the prevailing culture in engineering. According to a 2022 survey, 1 in 5 engineers has lost a work colleague to suicide and 1 in 4 male engineers reported poor mental health, self-harm, or suicide ideation.[2]  

The Bradley Curve’s success in reducing physical safety risks in engineering teams shows how to shift workplace cultures and help people feel more emotionally and psychologically safe. This is achieved through inclusion interdependency, which fosters a culture that minimizes or eliminates the stigma associated with mental health and where inclusion happens naturally.  

Steps to achieve this culture include workshops and awareness days, educating and galvanizing people to talk about their own diversity stories. It doesn’t matter if you’re a white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, neurotypical, and nondisabled man: you have a diversity story and it’s yours to own.  

Recognizing every individual’s diversity encourages empathy and awareness of the impact of negative workplace cultures, such as “banter” that reveals prejudice. We become aware of how negative language affects others and realize that colleagues may not feel safe sharing aspects of themselves that are taken for granted by majority groups. We learn that language barriers mean some people feel at risk because they can’t read the warning signs on labels, and that some women have to put up with ill-fitting personal protective equipment because it was designed to fit the average dimensions of a male body. Awareness opens up the discussion about “toxic masculinity” and how it harms men too, especially in a culture where talking about your mental health remains stigmatized and being “strong” is about putting on a brave face and “sucking it up.” 

DEI isn’t just a box-ticking exercise. When we have these honest discussions, build empathy, and share common ground, we start to build safer teams who look out for each other, and when we look out for the psychological safety of everyone, we save people’s lives.  

As engineers, we agree that physical safety requires immediate action. We need to treat psychological safety the same way. The best DEI strategy doesn’t avoid conversations about sexism, systemic racism, or homophobia; instead, it seeks to address these from a point of empathy and avoid the polarity that often follows if a strand-by-strand approach is adopted. 

In time, a joint DEI and health and safety policy for psychological safety results in the following design model (figure 2): 

1. DEI strategy introduced. 

2. Culture shifts, morale improves, stress reduces, and resilience rises. 

3. Psychological safety is achieved. 

4. Workplace mental health improves alongside physical safety and well-being. 

5. The company sees operational benefits (e.g., less turnover and absenteeism) and increased productivity. 

Conclusion
This is where EqualEngineers is hoping to “shake” things up. We work with engineering businesses to transform their workplace cultures by leveraging engineers’ familiarity with physical safety to engage the male majority in the DEI conversation. With our SHAKE model, we want to empower businesses to create a culture where their teams 

S – Share their experiences 
H – Hear each other and listen without judgment 
A – Act when they notice unsafe behaviors, both physical and psychological
K – Use Kindness and empathy in their approach to others 
E – Feel Empowered to be their whole selves at work. 

Ultimately, psychological safety comes down to one question: If you’re not looking out for someone else’s safety, then how confident can you be that others are looking out for yours? 

References 

[1] UK Department of Health and Social Care. 2022. Men urged to talk about mental health to prevent suicide. 

[2] EqualEngineers. 2022. Masculinity in Engineering: Perceptions in Engineering Culture.  

[3] Built In. 2023. 50 Diversity in the Workplace Statistics to Know.  

[4] DSS+. 2023. DSS+ Bradley Curve.  

[5] Suicide statistics. American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.  

Disclaimer 

The views expressed in this perspective are those of the author and not necessarily of the author’s organization, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies). This perspective is intended to help inform and stimulate discussion. It is not a report of the NAE or the National Academies. © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.