Imagine a senior associate at a busy law firm – let’s call her Helena.
Helena is recognised for her sharp analysis, careful drafting, and ability to spot risk. She is valued by her team and seen as a potential future partner.
Yet the work environment is challenging for her. The open-plan office is full of distractions, making it hard to focus. Ambiguous “urgent” requests without clear deadlines create extra pressure. To manage, she sometimes uses headphones, but this is misunderstood as being less collaborative.
Helena is neurodivergent. She hasn’t shared this at work, having seen requests for clarity or flexibility misunderstood or labelled as “difficult.” She’s also watched talented colleagues leave after struggling with the firm’s unwritten social expectations.
Over time, Helena spends more and more of her energy trying to ‘fit in’. The constant effort to adapt affects her wellbeing. Eventually, she leaves. The firm loses a skilled employee, HR faces another recruitment challenge, and the team must handle extra work.
But all this could have been avoided. It’s not about ability – it reveals a gap in psychological safety. Without understanding Helena’s individual needs, her workplace has unintentionally excluded her and reduced her chances of success.
Moving beyond compliance to connection
Creating a workplace where people feel genuinely safe and valued is essential for building strong team performance. Yet understanding someone else’s perspective is not always straightforward. In Helena’s situation, nobody does anything wrong – but the absence of psychological safety means she never feels able to share her needs, while colleagues miss opportunities to support her success.
What can you do to support psychological safety?
Psychological safety develops in environments where people can openly discuss their working styles, communicate honestly, and listen without judgement. It is strengthened not by grand gestures, but by consistent everyday behaviours: sharing how we prefer to work, explaining what support makes a difference, and respecting each other’s communication styles. When these conversations become part of daily work life, people are far more likely to feel included and appreciated.
Creating a culture that feels safe for difference does not happen overnight – it is built gradually, step by step. You see it reflected in the way managers give feedback, in moments when teams adapt to what individuals need, and across all the interactions that shape working life. When understanding and psychological safety underpin these experiences, inclusion grows – and with it, stronger performance across the team.
Here are some practical steps to embed psychological safety and inclusion into everyday working life:
1. Audit your ‘standard’ ways of working
Many organisations default to styles that favour neurotypical, extroverted ways of working. So review your practices. Are people expected to answer immediately in meetings? This can put off those who need time to think. Is commitment measured by office presence? This can disadvantage those with different sensory needs or outside responsibilities. Actively ask new hires what they prefer and how they work best.
2. Equip managers with the language of difference
Managers rarely intend to exclude. Often, they lack tools to recognise behaviours different from their own. If a manager values sociability, a quiet, analytical team member might be seen as disengaged. Training managers to look for intent rather than behaviour can help. When managers understand why someone works in a certain way, it becomes easier to adapt and support that person.
3. Connect individual needs to organisational wellbeing
Understanding leads to better performance. If an employee can say, “I work best in quiet blocks of time,” and that is respected, productivity rises. If people feel they must hide their needs, their wellbeing drops. Demonstrate to leadership that supporting difference is not just “nice to have” – it’s key for retention and performance.
How data bridges the gap
For many HR and legal teams, time pressure and scale make it hard to give every team member individual support. Instead, you need systems that enable ongoing understanding and trust across the whole organisation.
This is where solutions like behavioural profiling can be helpful – instead of relying on guesswork, you can use objective, actionable insight to understand your colleagues and their preferences – at scale. The Thomas approach is based on three pillars:
- Know your people,
- Optimise your interactions
- And create psychological safety through connection.
Know your people
Understanding each person’s strengths and needs allows managers to adapt their support and create a more inclusive team environment. By moving beyond assumptions and using clear insights into working styles and motivators, you can make meaningful changes that help people thrive. Simple tools can guide this process, making it easier to connect with and understand your team.
Optimise interactions
Applying insights about behaviour and working preferences to daily interactions helps teams collaborate more effectively. By recognising and respecting individual differences – such as how people communicate or prefer to receive feedback – managers and colleagues can reduce misunderstandings and build stronger, more supportive relationships. Over time, these small adjustments create a culture where inclusion is part of everyday work, leading to greater productivity and wellbeing for everyone.
Connecting your people
For someone like Helena, Thomas Connect would reveal her conscientiousness and need for clarity – allowing her manager to adjust communication and expectations. With insights in hand, Thomas Connect could help her manager adapt daily interactions – and let her know when she might need to speak up about her own needs. By allowing teams to compare profiles – manager to employee, or peer to peer – and identify where communication or working preferences differ, it becomes easier for everyone to adapt and collaborate more effectively and inclusively.
Want to shift inclusion from an abstract concept to an everyday reality?
Explore how Thomas can help managers create safer, more productive working relationships for every team member at www.thomas.co
