By Sofie Svendsgaard, Content Marketing Specialist, February 2025
If you want happy and confident employees who both perform and thrive, it requires an active focus on your organisation’s psychological work environment.
But what can you, as a leader, actually do to improve it? How should you prioritise your time, and why should it be a shared responsibility across the organisation?
In this article, you’ll find practical advice from Rasmus Gorell Mackenhauer, Head of Psychological Work Environment at the Danish Ministry of Defence Personnel Agency.
According to the Danish Working Environment Authority, the psychological work environment is defined as the interaction between psychological and social factors in the workplace and the individual employees.
While a poor psychological work environment can lead to stress, high absenteeism, and dissatisfaction, a healthy one fosters the opposite — greater well-being, efficiency, and quality of work.
A good psychological work environment is characterised by:
Where the traditional leader once focused primarily on control and task distribution, Rasmus Gorell Mackenhauer argues that leadership today is increasingly about adopting a servant role.
“We’re entering a period defined by an employee-driven market, which means we have to meet the expectations of the workforce. And if we want to accommodate what employees are asking for, we must focus on well-being and mental health,” he points out.
In practice, this means leaders should be asking questions such as:
• How can I, as a leader, help my employees thrive and grow?
• How can I enable them to succeed in their work?
• How can I unlock the potential the employees wish to realise?
This is not a new leadership perspective — but it’s one we must now act on if we want to attract and retain talent.
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How do you, as a leader, approach the task of creating a healthy psychological work environment? Here are five concrete recommendations from Rasmus Gorell Mackenhauer, who works daily with this exact challenge at the Danish Defence.
Consider whether you have regular check-ins with your employees — and more importantly, what those conversations are about. Most leader–employee talks tend to focus on tasks and priorities, but if you want to strengthen the psychological work environment, the dialogue needs to go deeper and follow a consistent structure.
Rasmus recommends structured one-on-one conversations aimed at discussing how you, together, can help the employee succeed in their work and better unfold their potential.
This may take some adjustment if you’re used to focusing mainly on tasks. However, structured well-being conversations make a real difference. They help you detect challenges or conflicts early — because your employees will naturally feel comfortable sharing their thoughts with you.
Many leaders spend most of their time on administration, task execution, meetings, and case management. It’s therefore important to assess whether your leaders actually have the time to prioritise the psychological work environment.
How much time do leaders have to support and advise employees and colleagues? It’s essential to ensure that there’s space and time for all leaders to focus more on relational leadership.
Make it a clear organisational priority and embed it into your culture. Share knowledge internally, and use leadership groups to discuss your intentions and goals — so everyone is aligned on what you want to achieve and how it should take shape.
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Would you like to work on improving both your own and your employees’ well-being?
On this course, you’ll learn to identify and meet your employees’ individual needs — and to create a motivating, learning-oriented, and productive work environment.
According to Rasmus, there’s a lot to gain by shifting your perspective. In many organisations, the focus is often on reducing stress and preventing burnout — making sure employees don’t call in sick or that conflicts don’t escalate. But what if, instead, the focus was on ensuring that employees are truly thriving?
As a leader, try to shift your focus and pay attention to the language you use in conversations with your team or leadership group. Ask yourself: How can we create even happier, more energised, and more motivated employees?
As a leader, your goal should be to help every employee thrive. You need to foster a culture where people feel safe to share and confident that you are genuinely interested in them.
This is, above all, about curiosity — curiosity about your employees as individuals, and about how you can help unfold and develop the potential each of them brings to the organisation.
When we talk about practising relational leadership, it largely means treating employees differently based on their individual needs.
To meet your employees where they are — and ensure their well-being — you need to recognise that what works for one person may not work for another. One employee may value quiet focus time and the option to work from home, while another may thrive on social interaction and deeper conversations.
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A poor psychological work environment is costly — in time, money, and reputation. When employees struggle, productivity drops, sick leave increases, and talent walks out the door. According to Rasmus Gorell Mackenhauer, the real question isn’t whether you have time to prioritise well-being, but whether you can afford not to.
Top management has a responsibility to ensure that employees don’t burn out. This isn’t just a moral issue — it’s also a legal obligation. Under Danish labour law, companies must ensure that work does not make employees ill. Studies show that stress-related absences cost society up to DKK 55 billion annually.
Conversely, when employees feel seen and work in a meaningful context, they perform better and more effectively. That’s why well-being should never be an afterthought — it should be a strategic priority for every leader.
How can you strengthen the psychological work environment in your organisation? That depends on your specific context and reality — but the most important thing is that you make it a priority. It’s about daily actions, awareness, and consistency.
Need advice or practical tools? CfL can help you build a stronger culture where employees thrive, perform, and stay. Let’s talk about how you can get started in the best possible way.
In the How to Build Psychological Safety course, you’ll gain the tools needed to assess, build, and foster psychological safety within your team.
Learn how to lead and facilitate one or more teams towards better performance in a motivating and effective way. Foster motivation, improve collaboration, and boost performance.
Gain insight into your personal leadership and gain company as a leader