Two Sides to Every Story: Exploring Hybrid Design Teams' Perceptions of Psychological Safety on Slack

TL;DR

This study explores how hybrid engineering teams perceive psychological safety on Slack, identifying key indicators and differences from in-person interactions to inform design improvements for better team collaboration.

Contribution

It introduces a set of Slack-based psychological safety indicators and insights into how PS manifests differently in hybrid teams, guiding future platform design and team practices.

Findings

Five facets of psychological safety in hybrid teams

Four perceived differences of PS on Slack versus in-person

Fifteen Slack-based PS indicators for automated measurement

Abstract

While the unique challenges of hybrid work can compromise collaboration and team dynamics, hybrid teams can thrive with well-informed strategies and tools that nurture interpersonal engagements. To inform future supports, we pursue a mixed-methods study of hybrid engineering design capstone teams' Psychological Safety (PS) (i.e., their climate of interpersonal risk-taking and mutual respect) to understand how the construct manifests in teams engaged in innovation. Using interviews, we study six teams' perceptions of PS indicators and how they present differently on Slack (when compared to in-person interactions). We then leverage the interview insights to design Slack-based PS indicators. We present five broad facets of PS in hybrid teams, four perceived differences of PS on Slack compared to in-person, and 15 Slack-based, PS indicators--the groundwork for future automated PS measurement on instant-messaging platforms. These insights produce three design implications and illustrative design examples for ways instant-messaging platforms can support Psychologically Safe hybrid teams, and best practices for hybrid teams to support interpersonal risk-taking and build mutual respect.