UNDERSTANDING PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN CROSS-FUNCTIONAL INDUSTRIAL SECURITY TEAMS THROUGH HR-LED DIVERSITY PROGRAMS

Abstract

The field of industrial security often focuses on technical and procedural elements, neglecting how people and psychological factors feature when building effective teams in high-pressure decision-making environments. This paper illustrates how psychological safety may improve team performance and cohesion in cross-functional teams in industrial security settings, specifically for teams undergoing HR-led diversity initiatives, which consist of members from disciplines such as engineering, information and cybersecurity, operations, and compliance. Cross-functional teams are particularly prone to communication failures, unclear roles, and misplaced interpersonal trust, which can threaten operational readiness and organizational resilience. Using organizational and psychological theory, this research changes HR diversity initiatives from being primarily viewed as a demographic intervention to worthwhile psychological interventions that can contribute to either in brute team performance or at least enhancing team interactions and cohesion based oninclusive team climates, speaking up behaviour, and diminishing threat from stereotypical impostor syndrome. The work makes use of newer approaches, such as team psychological mapping and inclusive leadership models, and is used to demonstrate how strategic involvement from HR practitioners can assist functional managers in minimizing implicit bias, engendering cultures of trust (trust climate) with teams of varied expertise, and leveraging distinct expertise for a unified security mission. Significantly, the study does not solely focus on demographic diversity, but highlights the use of cognitive diversity and functional diversity as forms of collective psychological preparedness. It is hoped this work heightens awareness of the emerging discourse on industrial security, through a collective argument and curry that technical competence and psychological safety be treasured as both underpinning elements of modern risk management and do coalesce together as complementary concepts.