Psychological safety should not depend on courage
Companies ask people to speak up.
Few create a measurable obligation to respond.
Vanguard Voices is developing a public organizational standard for whether people can speak up - and what organizations are required to do next.
Grounded in ISO 45003. Developed in public. Designed for recurring independent assessment.
For founders, practitioners and researchers: Follow the decisions, disagreements and evidence shaping the first version - a 5-minute letter each week.
100+ years
Combined organizational experience across the founder and initial working group members
ISO 45003
International guidance informing the draft
5 draft domains
Testing voice, response, protection, learning and accountability
3
ORGANIZATIONS
One founding organization and two independent pilots planned
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY SHOULD NOT DEPEND ON COURAGE
Companies ask people to speak up.
Few create a measurable obligation to respond.
Vanguard Voices is developing a public organizational standard for whether people can speak up - and what organizations are required to do next.
Grounded in ISO 45003. Developed in public. Designed for recurring independent assessment.
Follow the decisions, disagreements and evidence shaping the first version -
a 5-minute letter each week.
GET THE VANGUARD VOICE
A weekly letter from inside the building of the standard.
Draft criteria. Methodology decisions. Disagreements changing the work. The questions that remain unresolved - and what we are learning as the first version takes shape.
FOLLOW THE STANDARD AS THE RULES TAKE SHAPE
THE ACCOUNTABILITY GAP:
COMPANIES AUDIT THEIR FINANCES. THEY SURVEY THEIR PEOPLE.
Financial statements are audited.
Carbon emissions are reported.
Information security is tested.
But what happens when someone raises a difficult concern is usually known only inside the organization.
An employee survey can reveal how people experience the workplace. It cannot, by itself, show what leaders did when someone spoke up, whether the person was protected or whether the organization learned anything afterward.
Psychological safety remains largely a private claim.
Vanguard Voices is developing a way to turn that claim into a public test.
AN OPEN LETTER
TO ANYONE WHO HAS WATCHED THE SAME PATTERN REPEAT
You have watched this happen.
A concern is raised quietly.
Side conversations multiply.
Someone resigns.
An investigation follows.
The organization publishes a statement, holds a leadership retreat or restructures a team.
Six months later, the same pattern appears somewhere else.
It is not your imagination.
For decades, organizations have asked employees to be courageous, challenge the status quo and speak up.
Far less attention has been given to what the organization must do next.
The problem is not always that nobody spoke.
Often, someone did.
The problem is that hearing the concern created no clear obligation to respond.
Psychological safety requires structures that make listening, responding, protecting and learning part of how the organization operates.
I came to this work after more than twenty-five years inside large organizations. I have seen what speaking up can make possible - and what it can cost when the organization receiving the message has no reliable obligation to respond.
I am building Vanguard Voices alongside my full-time work because I no longer believe asking people to be more courageous is an adequate answer. If speaking up creates an obligation for the individual to take a risk, it should create an obligation for the organization to respond.
Vanguard Voices is developing a standard for that missing obligation.
The obligation begins with leadership.
The evidence must extend across the organization.
Jessica Bensch
Founder, Vanguard Voices
I came to this work after more than twenty-five years inside large organizations. I have seen what speaking up can make possible - and what it can cost when the organization receiving the message has no reliable obligation to respond.
That is why I am building Vanguard Voices. Asking people to be more courageous is not an adequate system. Speaking up should create an obligation for the organization to respond.
Jessica Bensch, Founder
WHAT AN ORGANIZATION MAKES SAFE - AND WHAT IT DOES NOT
Every organization has things people hesitate to say aloud.
The tension between two teams that everyone works around.
The concern about the strategy that never reaches the formal meeting.
The behavior of a senior colleague that has been an open secret for years.
Viewed separately, each situation can be explained away.
Together, they reveal a pattern.
Scene 1
THE RISK EVERYONE SAW AFTER THE MEETING
A team member sees a serious problem in the plan.
The senior sponsor asks whether everyone agrees.
Nobody objects.
Afterward, three people admit privately that they had the same concern.
The organization records consensus.
It may never record the risk people were afraid to name.
Scene 2
THE RESIGNATION EVERYBODY PREDICTED
The team had seen it coming for six months.
The exit interview produces no clear finding.
The next person hired into the role encounters the same conditions.
The organization records turnover.
The pattern remains invisible.
Scene 3
THE DECISION THAT UNRAVELS BY WEDNESDAY
Everyone agrees in the room.
The real disagreement emerges afterward in private messages and corridor conversations.
Within days, the decision is quietly reversed.
The organization records a decision.
It may never examine why nobody challenged it when it mattered.
Without a standard, each situation can be treated as an isolated incident.
A standard asks what became visible, what action followed and whether the people involved were protected.
WHAT MAKES THE PROPOSED CERTIFICATION CREDIBLE:
PUBLIC CRITERIA. COMPARABLE ASSESSMENT.
REVOCABLE CERTIFICATION
Vanguard Voices is developing the standard to turn a private claim into a public test.
The draft examines whether the conditions for speaking up are supported by evidence, experienced across the organization and strong enough to survive a difficult moment.
Public Criteria
The model is being built around public criteria, evidence requirements, assessment methods and certification rules.
The first version is being developed with practitioners, researchers and organizational operators, informed by ISO 45003.
Significant methodology decisions, disagreements and revisions will be visible while the standard is being built.
An organization should not be able to define psychological safety entirely on its own terms and then declare that it has achieved it.
Comparable Assessment
Participating organizations would be assessed against the same core criteria, evidence requirements and renewal expectations.
Published guidance would account for differences in organizational size, industry, workforce structure and legal context.
The goal is meaningful comparability - not context-blind scoring.
Revocable Certification
Under the proposed model, certification would need to be renewed regularly.
Serious or repeated breaches could lead to corrective action, suspension or withdrawal under published rules.
Without a credible way to remove certification, a certificate risks becoming decoration.
2026: Write & Challenge the First Version
Vanguard Voices has begun assembling a working group of approximately 15 to 25 practitioners, researchers and organizational operators to challenge the first draft.
The group will test the draft's assumptions, challenge the methodology and identify where the standard could fail, mislead or create unintended consequences.
One of the hardest questions is already clear:
What should happen when a senior leader’s conduct puts the organization in breach of the standard?
The work is based in Switzerland. Members may participate from anywhere.
Phase 1
2027: Test it in 3 Organizations
One founding organization and two independent pilots will test whether the criteria are practical, assessable and meaningful in different organizational contexts.
Their experience will provide the first evidence needed to strengthen the standard before wider use.
Participation will not guarantee certification.
Phase 2
After the Pilots: Revise, Publish & Expand
The evidence from the first cohort will inform the next version of the standard.
Before wider certification begins, Vanguard Voices expects to establish:
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Who is qualified to assess organizations
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How conflicts of interest are prevented
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Who makes certification decisions
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How decisions can be challenged
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When certification is renewed, suspended or withdrawn
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How the criteria, methodology and results are published
Wider certification will begin only when the evidence and governance architecture support it.
Phase 3
FROM WORKING GROUP TO PUBLIC STANDARD
Three phases, on the record.
The standard must be challenged, tested and revised before it can be opened more widely.
Here's what that looks like:
participation: TWO WAYS TO HELP SHAPE THE FIRST VERSION
The standard needs two kinds of early participants:
Organizations willing to test whether it works.
People willing to challenge how it is written.
For founders of 50-to-250 person companies
The first three organizations - one founding organization and two pilots - will help test the standard before a wider public launch.
Participation offers a structured examination against the emerging criteria and a direct role in improving the methodology.
This is for leaders willing to let the process reveal uncomfortable things - and prepared to treat certification as a test, not a badge.
The first cohort will be selected based on:
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Readiness for meaningful scrutiny
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Access to leadership and organizational evidence
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Willingness to act on what the process reveals
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The value the organization’s context would add to the pilot
Registering interest does not commit your organization to participating.
It begins a conversation about whether your organization and the first cohort are a suitable match.
For practitioners and researchers
Vanguard Voices is building the working group to create useful disagreement rather than easy consensus.
Vanguard Voices is seeking people with experience in areas including:
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Human resources and people operations
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Organizational development
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Employee voice and speaking-up systems
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Occupational health and psychosocial risk
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Organizational accountability
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Assessment, assurance and standards development
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Psychological-safety research
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Leadership response and retaliation
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ISO 45003 implementation
You do not need to agree with every premise behind Vanguard Voices.
You do need to be willing to challenge the work with evidence, experience and precision.
Applying does not guarantee a place. Additional members are being selected based on the experience and perspective they can bring to the work.
Jessica Bensch
Founder of Vanguard Voices
What this work requires
The standard does not need polite agreement.
It needs practitioners willing to try to break it.
Researchers willing to challenge what the first version gets wrong.
Founders willing to let their organizations be examined before the answers are comfortable.
Vanguard Voices is currently founder-funded, without corporate sponsorship or revenue from certification clients.
That protects the early drafting process from sponsor pressure.
It does not, by itself, create independence.
Independence must be designed through balanced governance, published conflict-of-interest rules, qualified external assessment, separation of assessment from certification decisions and credible complaints and appeals processes.
Independence is not a slogan. It is an architecture.
That architecture must be in place before public certification begins.
EARLY SUPPORTERS ON WHY THE MISSION MATTERS
Early supporters commenting on the mission
Vanguard Voices is an important organization doing important work. If you don't yet know about Vanguard Voices, look into their work today for the good of your organization!
Ali Atkison
HRD* The Leadership Development Company
Vanguard Voices is not afraid to challenge and bring to light what we often want to keep under the carpet - and we need more of these types of conversations in the current world. Their mission is clear and urgent: to uplift psychological safety at work on a global scale
Patrycja Riera
Inclusion Advisor & Strategist
Creating a movement is not easy and takes someone like Jessica to put it all on the line. What she has already accomplished is impressive.
Justin Tomlinson
Author, Advisor, Thought Leader
Common questions.
Vanguard Voices is designing certification as an independent assessment of whether an organization meets public criteria for psychological safety at work.
The assessment would examine whether people can raise concerns, disagree, admit mistakes and challenge decisions - and what the organization does when they do.
It would use more than a single employee-survey score.
Under the proposed model, certification would need to be renewed regularly and could be suspended or withdrawn when published requirements are no longer met.
The standard is still being developed. No organization has yet been certified.
ISO 45003 provides international guidance for managing psychosocial risks within an occupational health and safety management system.
The Vanguard Voices draft uses that guidance as an important foundation while developing criteria focused specifically on employee voice, interpersonal risk, leadership response, retaliation and public accountability.
Vanguard Voices is independent of ISO.
The proposed Vanguard Voices certification is not ISO certification.
FOLLOW THE STANDARD AS IT TAKES SHAPE
One weekly letter from inside the development of the first version
Receive:
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Draft criteria and methodology decisions
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Disagreements changing the work
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Unresolved questions
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What is entering the standard - and what is being left out
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First notice of working-group and pilot opportunities
One letter each week. Approximately five minutes to read.
Straight to Your Inbox:
One letter each week.
Approximately 5 minutes to read.
For practitioners, founders, researchers and anyone who no longer believes courage can be the infrastructure.
What is being decided:
The methodology choices.
The unresolved questions.
The disagreements changing the draft.
What is going into the first version - and what is being left out.
