If a company is truly able to reward risk-taking among employees, “the number-one thing they do is provide a measure of psychological safety,” said Matt Pepe, the VP of people at Barcelona-based pharmaceutical company Ferrer, which develops therapies for underserved conditions–an enterprise that requires ingenuity and creativity. 

In psychologically safe workplaces, Pepe said during a From Day One webinar on breaking barriers to personal growth, “it’s OK to go out on a limb and fail. But it’s hard to get to that point.”

It helps if company leaders set the tone, says Pepe’s fellow panelist Laura Magnuson, the VP of clinical engagement at virtual mental health platform Talkspace. “As leaders, we can build psychological safety in the workplace by modeling vulnerability: Admit when you’re not sure what the answer is,” then pursue a solution in conjunction with the employee.

Success can be measured and observed. Lawrence Price, the VP of people and culture at security firm Brink’s, said that evidence of a risk-taking environment tends to show up in two ways. 

First: internal mobility. Look at the share of open jobs that are filled with internal talent and the number of short-term projects people take on outside of their typical duties. “That tells me that they’re willing to allow people to try new things and to try to explore those opportunities,” he said. Second: continuous improvement processes. “How often [employees] are creating cross-functional teams to drive innovation and improvements inside the organization, which requires some level of experimentation.

Of course risk-taking requires curiosity, which employers can encourage. “As far as the people leaders go, we need to make sure that they’re coming into 1:1s with their direct reports with a level of curiosity to understand what’s going on with that employee, not just in the workplace, but outside of the workplace,” said Sony Das, VP of learning and organizational development at Hollywood production company Lionsgate. 

She likes to ask her team to reflect on the previous week. “What tasks or projects were you involved in that filled your cup? What made it enjoyable?” With that information, managers can steer their employees toward roles and tasks that they not only enjoy, but that they excel in. 

“Some people are working jobs, and some people are working careers,” said Rebecca Degner, the assistant VP of HR at professional services firm Genpact. And both are OK. It’s simply a matter of hearing what someone wants from their job and helping them find their way. “Have regular check-ins with employees as much as possible,” she said. It can be hard to find the time, so Degner has an open-door policy: “Anybody can schedule time on my calendar at any point in time to talk about their career.”

Culture is both an influence on and product of the way employees work with and relate to each other. Talkspace’s Magnuson posed this question to employers: Is your culture rigid and resistant to new ideas, or is it flexible? Further, do employees work in a series of closed loops or can they collaborate freely? Whether there’s cross-pollination can tell you a lot about company culture. 

This also goes for the way people talk. What’s the tone? Do employees one-up each other on stress? Do employees brag about exhaustion and burnout as badges of honor? A culture of strain is not a free one, nor is it an innovative one. If employees are to take risks, they have to have the energy and mental space to do so.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, Talkspace, for sponsoring this webinar. 

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is an independent journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about business and the world of work. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Inc., and Business Insider, among others. She is the recipient of a Virginia Press Association award for business and financial journalism.

(Photo by Iconic Prototype/iStock)