An open door policy is not a speak up culture.
I'm going to need you to sit with that for a second.
Because I've walked into a lot of organisations over the last 13 years that were genuinely proud of their open door policy. Their survey scores. Their 'we encourage feedback here' rhetoric.
And I've also walked into the same organisations and met the person who hadn't raised something in eight months because they had no idea how to say it without blowing everything up.
The door was open. They just couldn't walk through it.
That's not a speak up culture. That's a really well-intentioned gap.
And that gap, that space between the intention and the reality, is where trust erodes, performance suffers, and people go home carrying something they can't put down.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
Let me give you some numbers before I give you a definition.
Serious mental health claims in Australian workplaces have increased by more than 160% over the past decade. They now represent 12% of all serious workers' compensation claims, with an average compensation payout of $67,400. That's four times higher than other workplace injuries, and a median of seven weeks off work.
The top psychosocial hazards reported to regulators? Bullying, poor support, aggression, poor workplace relationships, and poor organisational justice.
Every single one of those is a conversation problem. They happen when things aren't raised early. When someone sees something and says nothing. When a manager sits on a difficult conversation because it feels too hard, hoping the issue might just blow over, or that the person might just resign.
(I know. I've said it out loud so you don't have to.)
The cost of silence is not abstract. It shows up in your claims data, your engagement scores, your turnover numbers. And it shows up in the person who comes home broken every night to the people who need them most.
What Neuroscience Tells Us
Here's something that stops most audiences cold.
Neuroscientists have found that social pain - exclusion, being ignored, overlooked, dismissed, activates the same brain regions as physical pain. The anterior cingulate cortex, which processes the distress of a broken bone or a burn, lights up in exactly the same way when someone is left out of a meeting, talked over in a conversation, or walked past by their manager without acknowledgement.
Being excluded isn't just unpleasant. The brain processes it as an injury.
And here's the workplace implication:
Every time a leader walks past someone without saying hello, talks over an idea without acknowledging it, or avoids the conversation they've been putting off for weeks, they are making a withdrawal from that person's trust account.
Research tells us it takes approximately five positive interactions to recover from one negative one. The micro moment you skip isn't free. It costs you five positive moments to earn back what you gave away in three seconds of inattention.
So What IS a Speak Up Culture?
Here's my definition, after 13 years in corporates plus 13 years running my own business, and more than 17,000 people, I've earned the right to have one.
A real speak up culture is one where leaders have regular, honest conversations with each other and with their teams. Conversations about expectations, challenges, and progress. They don't sit on things because it feels uncomfortable. They don't ignore the hard chat with a colleague in the hope it will resolve itself. And they don't put off discussing issues with their team in the hope they might just resign.
It is also the environment where every person, regardless of their role, their rank, or how long they've been there, feels valued, supported and genuinely safe to share ideas, ask questions and raise concerns.
AND this is the part most organisations completely miss:
Has the courage and the capability to do it in a way that actually works.
Not just bravely. Effectively.
Because I've seen what happens when people have one without the other.
Courage without capability blows up. The person raises something, but does it in a way that damages the relationship, creates a formal complaint, or makes the problem worse. And now everyone else in the team has watched what happened to the person who spoke up and they've learned their lesson. The result = they stay silent.
Capability without courage sits in a drawer. People have been to the training. They know the frameworks. They have the language. They just can't bring themselves to use it when it matters, because the environment doesn't feel safe enough.
Courage without capability is just noise.
Capability without courage is just potential.
A speak up culture needs both.
The Three Things a Speak Up Culture Requires
1. The culture (environment): built by leaders and colleagues, every day, in small moments.
Psychological safety isn't a program you implement. It's the accumulated weight of a thousand micro moments. The hello that was said, the idea that was acknowledged, the person who was asked how they were and actually got a real answer. Leaders, in particular, create it or destroy it in the gap between their intentions and their daily behaviours.
2. The courage: built through permission, not just encouragement.
Telling people to speak up doesn't build courage. Watching someone else speak up and seeing what happens to them, that builds courage. Leaders who model speaking up, who respond well and listen when people raise things, and who visibly protect those who do - they are building the courage in their team one response at a time.
3. The capability: built through skill, not just intention.
This is the piece most organisations skip entirely. People don't speak up because they're scared of saying it wrong. They're scared of making it worse. They don't have the language, the framework, or the practised muscle memory to navigate a difficult conversation without their brain going into threat mode. Capability is a skill. It can be taught. It must be practised. And it changes everything.
Why This Matters Right Now
Every Australian jurisdiction now requires organisations to proactively manage psychosocial hazards, not just respond to complaints, but prevent harm before it occurs. Regulators are issuing prohibition notices. Courts are handing down million-dollar decisions for poorly handled workplace situations.
And the legislation is explicit: training and awareness campaigns alone are not sufficient. Organisations must demonstrate actual behavioural change.
A speak up culture, a real one, built on environment, courage and capability is not a nice-to-have. It is the most practical, evidence-based approach to psychosocial risk prevention available. And it starts with the conversations we are currently avoiding.
The Question to Ask Yourself
When something goes wrong in your organisation, when a grievance lands on HR's desk, when a good person resigns without warning, when a team that used to perform stops performing, ask yourself this:
What was the conversation that didn't happen?
Because in my experience, there was almost always one. A moment when someone saw something, or felt something, or knew something and stayed silent. Not because they didn't care. Because they didn't feel safe enough, or skilled enough, to say it.
That's the gap. That's what a speak up culture closes.
Not an open door. An open conversation. Regularly. Honestly. With the courage and the capability to make it count.