Nobody reports anything in a workplace that punishes it

Psychological safety is not a soft extra, it is the precondition for the entire information system.

Every safety system depends on people telling the organisation things it would rather not hear. That a control is being bypassed. That a schedule is unrealistic. That something nearly went wrong yesterday. That an instruction cannot actually be followed as written. None of that information is available from a register or an inspection. It exists only in people's heads, and it moves only when the person judges that speaking will not cost them. That judgement is made rapidly, based on what happened to the last person who spoke, and once made it is very hard to reverse.

Psychosocial risk is a category organisations are expected to manage alongside physical risk, and the obligations around it differ by jurisdiction and industry, with the relevant regulator and current codes of practice as the authority. Set the specifics aside and the operational point remains: an environment where raising a problem is met with irritation, delay or quiet consequence produces silence, and silence is indistinguishable from safety right up until it is not. The organisation with no reports is not the one with no problems. It is usually the one where reporting stopped being worth the trouble.

Building the opposite condition is slow and mostly consists of small consistent responses. Thanking the person who raises something inconvenient, in front of others. Closing the loop so the reporter learns what happened. Responding to a near miss with curiosity rather than an investigation aimed at the reporter. Accepting a stoppage without visible annoyance when someone was not sure. Each of these is unremarkable in isolation. Together they determine whether an organisation can see itself clearly, which is the foundation everything else in the field is built on.