Safe to Be Engaged or Engaged to Be Safe? A Quantitative Examination of the Relationship between Employee Engagement and Psychological Safety within the Federal Workforc

The scholarly research provides ample evidence indicating the benefits that accrue to an organization as a result of increased levels of employee engagement and psychological safety. A key relationship between the constructs described in the literature is one in which psychological safety is an antecedent of employee engagement. Researchers have also posited the reciprocal scenario in which employee engagement is an antecedent of psychological safety. To date, the relationship between the constructs is not well understood. Increasing the levels of employee engagement within the federal workforce of the United States has become a priority in recent years. For management practitioners seeking to leverage research-backed guidance, little is provided and guidance related to the federal workforce is even more scant. This study utilized hierarchical linear regression to quantitatively examine the relationship between employee engagement and psychological safety in the federal workforce of the United States. Two important findings were identified. First, in alignment with results previously reported in the literature, psychological safety was found to be a significant predictor of employee engagement. Second, employee engagement was determined to be a significant predictor of psychological safety in the federal workforce. Effect sizes were calculated to determine the magnitude of the predictive capabilities and, in both cases, the effect sizes were small. Given the small, but statistically significant predictive effects, it is recommended that federal managers incorporate strategies aimed to increase employee engagement and psychological safety as part of overall strategies to increase organizational performance.