WORKING GROUP FOR THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY STANDARD
A PUBLIC STANDARD SHOULD BE CHALLENGED BEFORE ANY ORGANIZATION IS MEASURED AGAINST IT
Companies audit their finances, report their environmental impact and test their security.
What happens after an employee speaks up is rarely subject to a comparable public standard.
Vanguard Voices is developing one.
The Working Group exists to challenge the requirements, evidence and assessment methodology before organizations are measured against them.
THE GAP IS NOT ANOTHER TRAINING PROGRAM
Psychological safety has been studied for decades.
Organizations survey it. Leaders are trained in it. Employees are encouraged to speak up.
But the harder question comes afterwards:
What is the organization required to do once someone does?
Too often, that response remains internally defined, internally measured and internally judged.
Vanguard Voices is developing a public standard intended to make that response more visible, measurable and accountable.
The standard is still in development.
No organization has yet been certified.
FROM PRINCIPLE TO PUBLIC REQUIREMENTS
Vanguard Voices is not developing another employee survey or leadership framework.
The proposed model is being designed around:
Published requirements
Organizations are assessed against criteria that are visible in advance.
Evidence, not declaration
A policy or leadership statement is not enough. Requirements must be supported by evidence that can be examined.
Independent assessment
The methodology is being designed so assessors can review evidence against a consistent standard.
Recurring review
Certification is intended to require reassessment rather than becoming a permanent badge.
Consequence
The model is being designed so certification can be suspended or withdrawn when requirements are no longer met.
Five domains. What the draft examines.
The current draft examines organizational practice across five domains.
01
Leadership accountability
Whether the leadership team is subject to measurable expectations itself - including follow-through, review, documented disagreement and consequence when leadership behaviour repeatedly falls below the required threshold.
02
Codification and protection
Whether the policies and mechanisms that make speaking up possible exist, are known and are enforced - including response pathways, anti-retaliation protections and investigation processes.
03
Voice and feedback
Whether information can move upward through the organization and whether concerns, disagreement and feedback produce a visible response rather than disappearing into a process.
04
Lifecycle transparency
Whether decisions affecting hiring, performance, promotion, pay and exit are supported by sufficiently visible criteria, records and due process.
05
External accountability
Whether the organization submits to independent assessment, public reporting, recurring review and consequences when requirements are no longer met.
Built on recognized work, not from scratch
ISO 45003 is an important foundation for the draft.
It provides international guidance on managing psychosocial risks at work.
Vanguard Voices is independent of ISO, and the proposed Vanguard Voices certification is not ISO certification.
The work is narrower in one important respect: it focuses on whether organizational response to employee voice can be translated into public requirements that can be independently assessed.
The draft is also informed by established research on psychological safety, employee voice, psychosocial risk, organizational justice and accountability.
The purpose is not to claim that the evidence is settled.
It is to make clear where the standard is drawing from - and where judgment, testing and further evidence are still required.
HOW THE DRAFT IS BEING CHALLENGED
The Working Group is not there to endorse Vanguard Voices.
Its job is to find where the proposed standard is weak before organizations are ever assessed against it.
That means testing the draft from several directions.
What the group tests
Scientific validity
Are the requirements consistent with the available evidence?
Auditability
Could independent assessors reach sufficiently consistent conclusions?
Practical implementation
Could organizations realistically meet the requirements?
Where the draft can fail
Gaming resistance
Where could an organization satisfy the wording without changing what actually happens?
Governance
Are conflicts of interest, certification decisions, complaints and appeals handled credibly?
Clarity
Which requirements remain ambiguous or open to interpretation?
Evidence strength
What evidence should an assessor require — and what should never be accepted on its own?
What participation does not mean
Participation in the Working Group does not mean endorsement of Vanguard Voices or of the final standard.
It does not create a certification, assessor or advisory role.
It does not mean every recommendation will be adopted.
And it does not mean disagreements will disappear.
The purpose of the group is scrutiny.
If a requirement cannot survive scrutiny, it should change.
who is contributing
The Working Group brings together people with relevant experience across psychological safety, organizational behaviour, employee voice, psychosocial risk, organizational development, leadership, governance, assessment and standards.
The first group is deliberately small.
Participants do not need to agree with every premise or requirement. They do need to be willing to challenge assumptions with evidence, experience and precision.
Where a requirement raises a question the group cannot answer credibly on its own, Vanguard Voices can seek focused external specialist review.
THE QUESTIONS THAT ARE STILL OPEN
A credible standard should make its unresolved questions visible.
Among the questions being tested:
Could two independent assessors examine the same evidence and reach sufficiently consistent conclusions?
Which requirements are supported strongly enough to belong in a certification standard?
Where could an organization appear compliant without changing the underlying behaviour?
What evidence should be sufficient to satisfy a requirement?
What should trigger corrective action, suspension or withdrawal?
How should conflicts of interest in assessment and certification be governed?
Which requirements transfer cleanly across organizational sizes, sectors and jurisdictions?
Where should the standard stop rather than claim to certify something it cannot credibly measure?
These are not side questions.
They determine whether the standard can eventually be trusted.
Who is building this
Jessica Bensch is the founder of Vanguard Voices.
More than 25 years inside large organizations inform the work, including experience in organizational change, employee voice and the systems that shape what happens after someone challenges the status quo.
Vanguard Voices grew from a simple question:
If organizations ask people to speak up, what should the organization be required to do next?
The first version of the standard is now being challenged and refined.
No organization has yet been certified.
Showing the work while it is still being built is deliberate.
Scrutiny should begin before certification does.
HELP CHALLENGE THE FIRST VERSION
The Working Group is deliberately small.
We are looking for people with relevant expertise who are willing to challenge the draft with evidence, experience and precision - not simply endorse it.